THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  Master,  Camille  Saint-Saens 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 


BY 

CAMILLE  SAINT-SAENS 


TRANSLATED  BY 
EDWIN  GILE  RICH 

Translator  of  Lafond's  "Ma  Mitrailleuse,"  etc. 


BOSTON 
SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1919, 

BY  SMALL,  MAYXARD  &  COMPANY 
(INCORPORATED) 


Musitf 
Library 

MU 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 1 

II  THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 14 

III  VICTOR  HUGO 26 

IV  THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE    ...     35 
V  Louis  GALLET 50 

VI  HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA    ...     61 

VII  ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE 76 

VIII  POPULAR  SCIENCE  AND  ART 83 

IX  ANARCHY  IN  Music 91 

X  THE  ORGAN 98 

XI  JOSEPH  HAYDN  AND  THE  "  SEVEN  WORDS  "    .  109 

XII  THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  AT  HEIDELBERG  (1912)  121 

XIII  BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 133 

XIV  PAULINE  VIARDOT 144 

XV  ORPHEE 154 

XVI  DELSARTE 179 

XVII  SEGHERS 189 

XVIII  ROSSINI 201 

XIX  JULES  MASSENET 211 

XX  MEYERBEER 220 

XXI  JACQUES  OFFENBACH 253 

XXII  THEIR  MAJESTIES 262 

XXIII  MUSICAL  PAINTERS  .  273 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Master,  Camille  Saint-Saens          .  .  Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The  Paris  Opera         .......        36 

The  First  Performance  of  Dejanire  60 

M.  Saint-Saens  in  his  Later  Years        .          .          .          .80 

The  Madeleine  where  M.  Saint-Saens  played  the  organ 

for  twenty  years  .  .  .  .  .  .106 

Hector  Berlioz 134 

Mme.  Pauline  Viardot         .  .  .  .  .  .146 

Mme.  Patti 206 

M.  Jules  Massenet     .......      2l6 

Meyerbeer,  Composer  of  Les  Huguenots        .          .  .      242 

Jacques  Offenbach     .  .  .  .  .          .  .258 

Ingres,  the  painter  famous  for  his  violin        .  .  .      274 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

CHAPTER  I 

MEMORIES    OF    MY    CHILDHOOD 

In  bygone  days  I  was  often  told  that  I  had  two 
mothers,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  did  have  two 
— the  mother  who  gave  me  life  and  my  maternal 
great-aunt,  Charlotte  Masson.  The  latter  came 
from  an  old  family  of  lawyers  named  Gayard  and 
this  relationship  makes  me  a  descendant  of  Gen- 
eral Delcambre,  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  retreat 
from  Russia.  His  granddaughter  married  Count 
Durrieu  of  the  Academic  des  Inscriptions  et 
Belles-Lettres.  My  great-aunt  was  born  in  the 
provinces  in  1781,  but  she  was  adopted  by  a 
childless  aunt  and  uncle  who  made  their  home  in 
Paris.  He  was  a  wealthy  lawyer  and  they  lived 
magnificently. 

My  great-aunt  was  a  precocious  child — she 
1 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

walked  at  nine  months — and  she  became  a 
woman  of  keen  intellect  and  brilliant  attain- 
ments. She  remembered  perfectly  the  customs 
of  the  Ancien  Regime,  and  she  enjoyed  telling 
about  them,  as  well  as  about  the  Revolution,  the 
Reign  of  Terror,  and  the  times  that  followed. 
Her  family  was  ruined  by  the  Revolution  and  the 
slight,  frail,  young  girl  undertook  to  earn  her 
living  by  giving  lessons  in  French,  on  the  piano- 
forte— the  instrument  was  a  novelty  then — in 
singing,  painting,  embroidery,  in  fact  in  every- 
thing she  knew  and  in  much  that  she  did  not.  If 
she  did  not  know,  she  learned  then  and  there  so 
that  she  could  teach.  Afterwards,  she  married 
one  of  her  cousins.  As  she  had  no  children  of 
her  own,  she  brought  one  of  her  nieces  from 
Champagne  and  adopted  her.  This  niece  was 
my  mother,  Clemence  Collin.  The  Massons 
were  about  to  retire  from  business  with  a  com- 
fortable fortune,  when  they  lost  practically  every- 
thing within  two  weeks,  in  a  panic,  saving  just 
enough  to  live  decently.  Shortly  after  this  my 
mother  married  my  father,  a  minor  official  in  the 
Department  of  the  Interior.  My  great-uncle 

2 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

died  of  a  broken  heart  some  months  before  my 
birth  on  October  9,  1835.  My  father  died  of 
consumption  on  the  thirty-first  of  the  following 
December,  just  a  year  to  a  day  after  his  marriage. 

Thus  the  two  women  were  both  left  widows, 
poorly  provided  for,  weighed  down  by  sad  memo- 
ries, and  with  the  care  of  a  delicate  child.  In 
fact  I  was  so  delicate  that  the  doctors  held  out  lit- 
tle hope  of  my  living,  and  on  their  advice  I  was 
left  in  the  country  with  my  nurse  until  I  was  two 
years  old. 

While  my  aunt  had  had  a  remarkable  educa- 
tion, my  mother  had  not  been  so  widely  taught. 
But  she  made  up  for  any  lack  by  the  display  of 
an  imagination  and  an  eager  power  of  assimila- 
tion which  bordered  on  the  miraculous.  She 
often  told  me  about  an  uncle  who  was  very  fond 
of  her — he  had  been  ruined  in  the  cause  of  Phil- 
ippe Egalite.  This  uncle  was  an  artist,  but  he 
was,  nevertheless,  passionately  fond  of  music. 
He  had  even  built  with  his  own  hands  a  concert 
organ  on  which  he  used  to  play.  My  mother 
used  to  sit  between  his  knees  and,  while  he 
amused  himself  by  running  his  fingers  through 

3 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

her  splendid  black  hair,  he  would  talk  to  her 
about  art,  music,  painting — beauty  in  every 
form.  So  she  got  it  into  her  head  that  if  she  ever 
had  sons  of  her  own,  the  first  should  be  a  musi- 
cian, the  second  a  painter,  and  the  third  a  sculp- 
tor. As  a  result,  when  I  came  home  from  the 
nurse,  she  was  not  greatly  surprised  that  I  began 
to  listen  to  every  noise  and  to  every  sound ;  that  I 
made  the  doors  creak,  and  would  plant  myself  in 
front  of  the  clocks  to  hear  them  strike.  My  spe- 
cial delight  was  the  music  of  the  tea-kettle — a 
large  one  which  was  hung  before  the  fire  in  the 
drawing-room  every  morning.  Seated  nearby  on 
a  small  stool,  I  used  to  wait  with  a  lively  curios- 
ity for  the  first  murmurs  of  its  gentle  and  varie- 
gated crescendo,  and  the  appearance  of  a  micro- 
scopic oboe  which  gradually  increased  its  song 
until  it  was  silenced  by  the  kettle  boiling.  Ber- 
lioz must  have  heard  that  oboe  as  well  as  I,  for  I 
rediscovered  it  in  the  "Ride  to  Hell"  in  his  La 
Damnation  de  Faust. 

At  the  same  time  I  was  learning  to  read. 
When  I  was  two-years-and-a-half  old,  they  placed 
me  in  front  of  a  small  piano  which  had  not  been 

4 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

opened  for  several  years.  Instead  of  drumming 
at  random  as  most  children  of  that  age  would 
have  done,  I  struck  the  notes  one  after  another, 
going  on  only  when  the  sound  of  the  previous 
note  had  died  away.  My  great-aunt  taught  me 
the  names  of  the  notes  and  got  a  tuner  to  put  the 
piano  in  order.  While  the  tuning  was  going  on, 
I  was  playing  in  the  next  room,  and  they  were  ut- 
terly astonished  when  I  named  the  notes  as  they 
were  sounded.  I  was  not  told  all  these  details 
• — I  remember  them  perfectly. 

I  was  taught  by  Le  Carpentier's  method  and  I 
finished  it  in  a  month.  They  couldn't  let  a  little 
monkey  like  that  work  away  at  the  piano,  and  I 
cried  like  a  lost  soul  when  they  closed  the  instru- 
ment. Then  they  left  it  open  and  put  a  small 
stool  in  front  of  it.  From  time  to  time  I  would 
leave  my  playthings  and  climb  up  to  drum  out 
whatever  came  into  my  head.  Gradually,  my 
great-aunt,  who  fortunately  had  an  excellent 
foundation  in  music,  taught  me  how  to  hold  my 
hands  properly  so  that  I  did  not  acquire  the  gross 
faults  which  are  so  difficult  to  correct  later  on. 
But  they  did  not  know  what  sort  of  music  to  give 

5 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

me.  That  written  especially  for  children  is,  as 
a  rule,  entirely  melody  and  the  part  for  the  left 
hand  is  uninteresting.  I  refused  to  learn  it. 
"The  bass  doesn't  sing,"  I  said,  in  disgust. 

Then  they  searched  the  old  masters,  in  Haydn 
and  Mozart,  for  things  sufficiently  easy  for  me  to 
handle.  At  five  I  was  playing  small  sonatas  cor- 
rectly, with  good  interpretation  and  excellent 
precision.  But  I  consented  to  play  them  only 
before  listeners  capable  of  appreciating  them.  I 
have  read  in  a  biographical  sketch  that  I  was 
threatened  with  whippings  to  make  me  play. 
That  is  absolutely  false;  but  it  was  necessary  to 
tell  me  that  there  was  a  lady  in  the  audience  who 
was  an  excellent  musician  and  had  fastidious 
tastes.  I  would  not  play  for  those  who  did  not 
know. 

As  for  the  threat  of  whippings,  that  must  be 
relegated  to  the  realm  of  legends  with  the  one 
that  Garcia  punished  his  daughters  to  make  them 
learn  to  sing.  Madame  Viardot  expressly  told 
me  that  neither  she  nor  her  sister  was  abused  by 
their  father  and  that  they  learned  music  without 
realizing  it,  just  as  they  learned  to  talk. 

6 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

But  in  spite  of  my  surprising  progress  my 
teacher  did  not  foresee  what  my  future  was  to  be. 
"When  he  is  fifteen,"  she  said,  "if  he  can  write 
a  dance,  I  shall  be  satisfied."  It  was  just  at  this 
time,  however,  that  I  began  to  write  music.  I 
wrote  waltzes  and  galops — the  galop  was  fashion- 
able at  that  period;  it  ran  to  rather  ordinary  mus- 
ical motives  and  mine  were  no  exception  to  the 
rule.  Liszt  had  to  show  by  his  Galop  Chroma- 
tique  the  distinction  that  genius  can  give  to  the 
most  commonplace  themes.  My  waltzes  were 
better.  As  has  always  been  the  case  with  me,  I 
was  already  composing  the  music  directly  on  pa- 
per without  working  it  out  on  the  piano.  The 
waltzes  were  too  difficult  for  my  hands,  so  a  friend 
of  the  family,  a  sister  of  the  singer  Geraldy,  was 
kind  enough  to  play  them  for  me. 

I  have  looked  over  these  little  compositions 
lately.  They  are  insignificant,  but  it  is  impos- 
sible to  find  a  technical  error  in  them.  Such 
precision  was  remarkable  for  a  child  who  had  no 
idea  of  the  science  of  harmony.  About  that  time 
some  one  had  the  notion  that  I  should  hear  an 
orchestra.  So  they  took  me  to  a  symphony  con- 

7 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

cert  and  my  mother  held  me  in  her  arms  near  the 
door.  Until  then  I  had  only  heard  single  violins 
and  their  tone  had  not  pleased  me.  But  the  im- 
pression of  the  orchestra  was  entirely  different 
and  I  listened  with  delight  to  a  passage  played  by 
a  quartet,  when,  suddenly,  came  a  blast  from  the 
brass  instruments — the  trumpets,  trombones  and 
cymbals.  I  broke  into  loud  cries,  "Make  them 
stop.  They  prevent  my  hearing  the  music." 
They  had  to  take  me  out. 

When  I  was  seven,  I  passed  out  of  my  great- 
aunt's  hands  into  Stamaty's.  He  was  surprised 
at  the  way  my  education  in  music  had  been  di- 
rected and  he  expressed  this  in  a  small  work  in 
which  he  discussed  the  necessity  of  making  a  cor- 
rect start.  In  my  case,  he  said,  there  was  noth- 
ing to  do  but  to  perfect. 

Stamaty  was  Kalkbrenner's  best  pupil  and  the 
propagator  of  the  method  he  had  invented. 
This  method  was  based  on  the  guide  main,  so  I 
was  put  to  work  on  it.  The  preface  to  Kalk- 
brenner's method,  in  which  he  relates  the  begin- 
nings of  his  invention,  is  exceedingly  interesting. 
This  invention  consisted  of  a  rod  placed  in  front 

8 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

of  the  keyboard.  The  forearm  rested  on  this 
rod  in  such  a  way  that  all  muscular  action  save 
that  of  the  hand  was  suppressed.  This  system  is 
excellent  for  teaching  the  young  pianist  how  to 
play  pieces  written  for  the  harpsichord  or  the  first 
pianofortes  where  the  keys  responded  to  slight 
pressure;  but  it  is  inadequate  for  modern  works 
and  instruments.  It  is  the  way  one  ought  to  be- 
gin, for  it  develops  firmness  of  the  fingers  and 
suppleness  of  the  wrist,  and,  by  easy  stages,  adds 
the  weight  of  the  forearm  and  of  the  whole  arm. 
But  in  our  day  it  has  become  the  practice  to  be- 
gin at  the  end.  We  learn  the  elements  of  the 
fugue  from  Sebastian  Bach's  W 'ohltemperirte 
Klavier,  the  piano  from  the  works  of  Schumann 
and  Liszt,  and  harmony  and  instrumentation 
from  Richard  Wagner.  All  too  often  we  waste 
our  efforts,  just  as  singers  who  learn  roles  and 
rush  on  the  stage  before  they  know  how  to  sing 
ruin  their  voices  in  a  short  time. 

Firmness  of  the  fingers  is  not  the  only  thing 
that  one  learns  from  Kalkbrenner's  method,  for 
there  is  also  a  refinement  of  the  quality  of  the 

9 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

sound  made  by  the  fingers  alone,  a  valuable  re- 
source which  is  unusual  in  our  day. 

Unfortunately,  this  school  invented  as  well 
continuous  legato,  which  is  both  false  and  monot- 
onous; the  abuse  of  nuances,  and  a  mania  for 
continual  expressio  used  with  no  discrimination. 
All  this  was  opposed  to  my  natural  feelings,  and 
I  was  unable  to  conform  to  it.  They  reproached 
me  by  saying  that  I  would  never  get  a  really  fine 
effect — to  which  I  was  entirely  indifferent. 

When  I  was  ten,  my  teacher  decided  that  I  was 
sufficiently  prepared  to  give  a  concert  in  the  Salle 
Pleyel,  so  I  played  there,  accompanied  by  an  Ital- 
ian orchestra,  with  Tilmant  as  the  conductor.  I 
gave  Beethoven's  Concerto  in  C  minor  and  one  of 
Mozart's  concertos  in  B  flat.  There  was  some 
question  of  my  playing  at  the  Societe  des  Con- 
certs du  Conservatoire,  and  there  was  even  a  re- 
hearsal. But  Seghers,  who  afterwards  founded 
the  Societe  St.  Cecile,  was  a  power  in  the  affairs 
of  the  orchestra.  He  detested  Stamaty  and  told 
him  that  the  Societe  was  not  organized  to  play 
children's  accompaniments.  My  mother  felt 
hurt  and  wanted  to  hear  nothing  more  of  it. 

10 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

After  my  first  concert,  which  was  a  brilliant 
success,  my  teacher  wanted  me  to  give  others,  but 
my  mother  did  not  wish  me  to  have  a  career  as  an 
infant  prodigy.  She  had  higher  ambitions  and 
was  unwilling  for  me  to  continue  in  concert  work 
for  fear  of  injuring  my  health.  The  result  was 
that  a  coolness  sprang  up  between  my  teacher  and 
me  which  ended  our  relations. 

At  that  time  my  mother  made  a  remark  which! 
was  worthy  of  Cornelia.  One  day  some  one  re- 
monstrated with  her  for  letting  me  play  Bee- 
thoven's sonatas.  "What  music  will  he  play 
when  he  is  twenty?"  she  was  asked.  "He  will 
play  his  own,"  was  her  reply. 

The  greatest  benefit  I  got  from  my  experience 
with  Stamaty  was  my  acquaintance  with  Maleden, 
whom  he  gave  me  as  my  teacher  in  composition. 
Maleden  was  born  in  Limoges,  as  his  accent  al- 
ways showed.  He  was  thin  and  long-haired,  a 
kind  and  timid  soul,  but  an  incomparable 
teacher.  He  had  gone  to  Germany  in  his  youth 
to  study  with  a  certain  Gottfried  Weber,  the  in- 
ventor of  a  system  which  Maleden  brought  back 

11 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

with  him  and  perfected.  He  made  it  a  wonder- 
ful tool  with  which  to  get  to  the  depths  of  music 
— a  light  for  the  darkest  corners.  In  this  system 
the  chords  are  not  considered  in  and  for  them- 
selves— as  fifths,  sixths,  sevenths — but  in  rela- 
tion to  the  pitch  of  the  scale  on  which  they  ap- 
pear. The  chords  acquire  different  characteris- 
tics according  to  the  place  they  occupy,  and,  as  a 
result,  certain  things  are  explained  which  are, 
otherwise,  inexplicable.  This  method  is  taught 
in  the  Ecole  Niedermeyer,  but  I  don't  know  that 
it  is  taught  elsewhere. 

Maleden  was  extremely  anxious  to  become  a 
professor  at  the  Conservatoire.  As  the  result  of 
powerful  influence,  Auber  was  about  to  sign 
Maleden's  appointment,  when,  in  his  scrupulous 
honesty,  he  thought  he  ought  to  write  and  warn 
him  that  his  method  differed  entirely  from  that 
taught  in  the  institution.  Auber  was  frightened 
and  Maleden  was  not  admitted. 

Our  lessons  were  often  very  stormy.  From 
time  to  time  certain  questions  came  up  on  which  I 
could  not  agree  with  him.  He  would  then  take 
me  quietly  by  the  ear,  bend  my  head  and  hold  my 

12 


MEMORIES  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD 

ear  to  the  table  for  a  minute  or  two.  Then,  he 
would  ask  whether  I  had  changed  my  mind.  As 
I  had  not,  he  would  think  it  over  and  very  often 
he  would  confess  that  I  was  right. 

"Your  childhood,"  Gounod  once  told  me, 
"wasn't  musical."  He  was  wrong,  for  he  did  not 
know  the  many  tokens  of  my  childhood.  Many 
of  my  attempts  are  unfinished — to  say  nothing 
of  those  I  destroyed — but  among  them  are  songs, 
choruses,  cantatas,  and  overtures,  none  of  which 
will  ever  see  the  light.  Oblivion  will  enshroud 
these  gropings  after  effect,  for  they  are  of  no  in- 
terest to  the  public.  Among  these  scribblings  I 
have  found  some  notes  written  in  pencil  when  I 
was  four.  The  date  on  them  leaves  no  doubt 
about  the  time  of  their  production. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    OLD    CONSERVATOIRE 

I  cannot  let  the  old  Conservatoire  in  the  Rue 
Bergere  go  without  paying  it  a  last  farewell,  for  I 
loved  it  deeply  as  we  all  love  the  things  of  our 
youth.  I  loved  its  antiquity,  the  utter  absence  of 
any  modern  note,  and  its  atmosphere  of  other 
days.  I  loved  that  absurd  court  with  the  wailing 
notes  of  sopranos  and  tenors,  the  rattling  of  pi- 
anos, the  blasts  of  trumpets  and  trombones,  the 
arpeggios  of  clarinets,  all  uniting  to  form  that 
ultra-polyphone  which  some  of  our  composers 
have  tried  to  attain — but  without  success. 
Above  all  I  loved  the  memories  of  my  education 
in  music  which  I  obtained  in  that  ridiculous  and 
venerable  palace,  long  since  too  small  for  the 
pupils  who  thronged  there  from  all  parts  of  the 
world. 

I  was  fourteen  when  Stamaty,  my  piano 
14 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

teacher,  introduced  me  to  Benoist,  the  teacher  of 
the  organ,  an  excellent  and  charming  man,  famil- 
iarly known  as  "Father  Benoist."  They  put 
me  in  front  of  the  keyboard,  but  I  was  badly 
frightened,  and  the  sounds  I  made  were  so  ex- 
traordinary that  all  the  pupils  shouted  with 
laughter.  I  was  received  at  the  Conservatoire  as 
an  "auditor." 

So  there  I  was  only  admitted  to  the  honor  of 
listening  to  others.  I  was  extremely  painstak- 
ing, however,  and  I  never  lost  a  note  or  one  of  the 
teacher's  words.  I  worked  and  thought  at  home, 
studying  hard  on  Sebastian  Bach's  Wohltemper- 
irte  Klavier.  All  of  the  pupils,  however,  were 
not  so  industrious.  One  day,  when  they  had  all 
failed  and  Benoist,  as  a  result,  had  nothing  to  do, 
he  put  me  at  the  organ.  This  time  no  one 
laughed  and  I  at  once  became  a  regular  pupil. 
At  the  end  of  the  year  I  won  the  second  prize. 
I  would  have  had  the  first  except  for  my  youth 
and  the  inconvenience  of  having  me  leave  a  class 
where  I  needed  to  stay  longer. 

That  same  year  Madeleine  Brohan  won  the 
first  prize  in  comedy.  She  competed  with  a  se- 

15 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

lection  from  Misanthrope,  and  Mile.  Jouassin 
gave  the  other  part  of  the  dialogue.  Mile.  Jou- 
assin's  technique  was  the  better,  but  Madeleine 
Brohan  was  so  wonderful  in  beauty  and  voice  that 
she  carried  off  the  prize.  The  award  made  a 
great  uproar.  To-day,  in  such  a  case,  the  prize 
would  be  divided.  Mile.  Jouassin  won  her  prize 
the  following  year.  After  leaving  school,  she  ac- 
cepted and  held  for  a  long  time  an  important 
place  at  the  Comedie-Frangaise. 

Benoisc  was  a  very  ordinary  organist,  but  an 
admirable  teacher.  A  veritable  galaxy  of  talent 
came  from  his  class.  He  had  little  to  say,  but 
as  his  taste  was  refined  and  his  judgment  sure, 
nothing  he  said  lacked  weight  or  authority.  He 
collaborated  in  several  ballets  for  the  Opera  and 
that  gave  him  a  good  deal  of  work  to  do.  It 
sounds  incredible,  but  he  used  to  bring  his 
"work"  to  class  and  scribble  away  on  his  orches- 
tration while  his  pupils  played  the  organ.  This 
did  not  prevent  his  listening  and  looking  after 
them.  He  would  leave  his  work  and  make  ap- 
propriate comments  as  though  he  had  no  other 
thought. 

16 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

In  addition  to  his  ballets,  Benoist  did  other  lit- 
tle odd  jobs  for  the  Opera.  As  a  result  one  day, 
without  thinking,  he  gave  me  the  key  to  a  deep 
secret.  In  his  famous  Traite  d' Instrumentation 
Berlioz  spoke  of  his  admiration  for  a  passage  in 
Sacchini's  CEdipus  a  Colone.  Two  clarinets  are 
heard  in  descending  thirds  of  real  charm  just  be- 
fore the  words,  "Je  connus  la  charmante 
Eriphyle."  Berlioz  was  enthusiastic  and  wrote: 

"We  might  believe  that  we  really  see  Eriphyle 
chastely  kiss  his  eyes.  It  is  admirable.  And 
yet,"  he  adds,  "there  is  no  trace  of  this  effect  in 
Sacchini's  score." 

Now  Sacchini,  for  some  reason  or  other  which 
I  do  not  know,  did  not  use  clarinets  once  in  the 
whole  score.  Benoist  was  commissioned  to  add 
them  when  the  work  was  revived,  as  he  told  me  as 
we  were  chatting  one  day.  Berlioz  did  not  know 
this,  and  Benoist,  who  had  not  read  Berlioz's 
Traite.,  knew  nothing  of  the  romantic  musician's 
enthusiastic  admiration  of  his  work.  These  hap- 
pily turned  thirds,  although  they  weren't  Sac- 
chini's, were,  none  the  less,  an  excellent  innova- 
tion. 

17 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Benoist  was  less  happy  when  he  was  asked  to 
put  some  life  into  Bellini's  Romeo  by  using  ear- 
splitting  outbursts  of  drums,  cymbals,  and  brass. 
During  the  same  noise-loving  period  Costa,  in 
London,  gave  Mozart's  Don  Juan  the  same  treat- 
ment. He  let  loose  throughout  the  opera  the 
trombones  which  the  author  intentionally  re- 
served for  the  end.  Benoist  ought  to  have  re- 
fused to  do  such  a  barbarous  piece  of  work. 
However,  it  had  no  effect  in  preventing  the  fail- 
ure of  a  worthless  piece,  staged  at  great  expense 
by  the  management  which  had  rejected  Les  Troy- 
ens. 

I  was  fifteen  when  I  entered  Halevy's  class. 
I  had  already  completed  the  study  of  harmony, 
counterpoint  and  fugue  under  Maleden's  direc- 
tion. As  I  have  said,  his  method  was  that  taught 
at  the  Ecole  Niedermeyer.  Faure,  Messager, 
Perilhou,  and  Gigot  were  trained  there  and  they 
taught  this  method  in  turn.  My  class-work 
consisted  in  making  attempts  at  vocal  and  instru- 
mental music  and  orchestration.  My  Reverie, 
La  Feuille  de  Peuplier  and  many  other  things 
first  appeared  there.  They  have  been  entirely 

18 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

forgotten,  and  rightly,  for  my  work  was  very  un- 
even. 

At  the  end  of  his  career  Halevy  was  constantly 
writing  opera  and  opera-comique  which  added 
nothing  to  his  fame  and  which  disappeared  never 
to  be  revived  after  a  respectable  number  of  per- 
formances. He  was  entirely  absorbed  in  his 
work  and,  as  a  result,  he  neglected  his  classes  a 
good  deal.  He  came  only  when  he  had  time. 
The  pupils,  however,  came  just  the  same  and 
gave  each  other  instruction  which  was  far  less  in- 
dulgent than  the  master's,  for  his  greatest  fault 
was  an  overweening  good  nature.  Even  when 
he  was  at  class  he  couldn't  protect  himself  from 
self-seekers.  Singers  of  all  sorts,  male  and  fe- 
male, came  for  a  hearing.  One  day  it  was  Marie 
Cabel,  still  youthful  and  dazzling  both  in  voice 
and  beauty.  Other  days  impossible  tenors 
wasted  his  time.  When  the  master  sent  word 
that  he  wasn't  coming — this  happened  often — I 
used  to  go  to  the  library,  and  there,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  completed  my  education.  The  amount 
of  music,  ancient  and  modern,  I  devoured  is  be- 
yond belief. 

19 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

But  it  wasn't  enough  just  to  read  music — I 
needed  to  hear  it.  Of  course  there  was  the  So- 
ciete  des  Concerts,  but  it  was  a  Paradise,  guarded 
by  an  angel  with  a  flaming  sword,  in  the  form 
of  a  porter  named  Lescot.  It  was  his  duty  to 
prevent  the  profane  defiling  the  sanctuary.  Les- 
cot was  fond  of  me  and  appreciated  my  keen  de- 
sire to  hear  the  orchestra.  As  a  result  he  made 
his  rounds  as  slowly  as  possible  in  order  to  put 
me  out  only  as  a  last  resort.  Fortunately  for  me, 
Marcelin  de  Fresne  gave  me  a  place  in  his  box, 
which  I  was  permitted  to  occupy  for  several  years. 

I  used  to  read  and  study  the  symphonies  before 
I  heard  them  and  I  saw  grave  defects  in  the  So- 
ciete's  vaunted  execution.  No  one  would  stand 
them  now,  but  then  they  passed  unnoticed.  I 
was  naive  and  lacked  discretion,  and  so  I  often 
pointed  out  these  defects.  It  can  be  easily  imag- 
ined what  vials  of  wrath  were  poured  on  me. 

As  far  as  the  public  was  concerned,  the  great 
success  of  these  concerts  was  due  to  the  incom- 
parable charm  of  the  depth  of  tone,  which  was  at- 
tributed to  the  hall.  The  members  of  the  So- 

20 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

ciete  believed  this,  too,  and  they  would  let  no 
other  orchestra  be  heard  there.  This  state  of 
affairs  lasted  until  Anton  Rubinstein  got  permis- 
sion from  the  Minister  of  Fine  Arts  to  give  a  con- 
cert there,  accompanied  by  the  Colonne  orches- 
tra. The  Societe  fretted  and  fumed  at  this  and 
threatened  to  give  up  its  series  of  concerts.  But 
the  Societe  was  overruled  and  the  concert  was 
given.  To  the  general  surprise  it  was  seen  that 
another  orchestra  in  the  same  hall  produced  an 
entirely  different  effect.  The  depth  of  tone 
which  had  been  appreciated  so  highly,  it  was 
found,  was  due  to  the  famous  Societe  itself,  to 
the  character  of  the  instruments  and  the  execu- 
tion. 

Nevertheless,  the  hall  is  excellent,  although  it 
is  no  longer  adequate  for  the  presentation  of  mod- 
ern compositions.  But  it  is  a  marvellous  place 
for  the  numerous  concerts  given  by  virtuosi,  both 
singers  and  instrumentalists,  accompanied  by  an 
orchestra,  and  for  chamber  music.  Finally,  the 
hall  where  France  was  introduced  to  the  master- 
pieces of  Haydn,  Mozart  and  Beethoven,  whose 

21 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

influence  has  been  so  profound,  is  a  historic 
place. 

Numerous  improvements  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Conservatoire  have  been  introduced 
during  the  last  few  years.  On  the  other  hand, 
old  and  honored  customs  have  disappeared  and 
we  can  but  regret  their  loss.  From  Auber's  time 
on  there  was  a  pension  connected  with  the  Con- 
servatoire. Here  the  young  singers  who  came 
from  the  provinces  at  eighteen  found  board  and 
lodging,  a  regular  life,  and  a  protection  from  the 
temptations  of  a  large  city,  so  dangerous  to  fresh 
young  voices.  Bouhy,  Lassalle,  Capoul,  Gail- 
hard  and  many  others  who  have  made  the  French 
stage  famous  came  from  this  pension. 

We  also  used  to  have  dramatic  recitals  which 
were  excellent  both  for  the  performers  and  the 
audiences  as  they  gave  works  which  were  not  in 
the  usual  repertoire.  In  these  recitals  they  gave 
Mehul's  Joseph,  which  had  disappeared  from  the 
stage  for  a  long  time.  The  beautiful  choruses 
sung  by  the  fresh  voices  of  the  pupils  made  such 
a  success  and  the  whole  work  was  so  enthusias- 
tically applauded  that  it  was  revived  at  the  Op- 

22 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

era-Comique  and  won  back  a  success  which  it  has 
never  lost.  We  also  heard  there  Gluck's  Orphee 
long  before  that  masterpiece  was  revived  at  the 
Theatre-Lyrique.  Then  there  was  Mehul's  IT- 
ato,  a  curious  and  charming  work  which  the 
Opera  took  up  afterwards.  And  there,  too,  they 
gave  the  last  act  of  Rossini's  Otello.  The  temp- 
est in  that  act  gave  me  the  idea  of  the  one  which 
rumbles  through  the  second  act  of  Samson. 

When  the  hall  was  reconstructed,  the  stage 
was  destroyed  so  that  such  performances  are  im- 
possible. But  to  make  up  for  this,  they  installed 
a  concert  organ,  a  necessary  adjunct  for  musical 
performances. 

Finally,  in  Auber's  day  and  even  in  that  of 
Ambroise  Thomas,  the  director  was  master.  No 
one  had  dreamed  of  creating  a  committee,  which, 
under  cover  of  the  director's  responsibility, 
would  strangely  diminish  his  authority.  The 
only  benefit  from  the  new  system  has  been  the 
end  of  the  incessant  war  which  the  musical  crit- 
ics waged  on  the  director.  But  that  did  no  harm, 
either  to  the  director  or  to  the  school,  for  the  lat- 
ter kept  on  growing  to  such  an  extent  that  it 

23 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ought  to  have  been  enlarged  long  ago.  The 
committee  plan  has  won  and  the  incident  is 
closed.  One  may  only  hope  that  steps  will  be 
taken  to  make  possible  an  increase  in  the  number 
of  pupils  since  so  many  candidates  apply  each 
year  and  so  few  are  chosen. 

As  everyone  knows,  we  have  been  struck  by 
a  perfect  mania  for  reforms,  so  there  is  no  harm 
in  proposing  one  for  the  Conservatoire.  For- 
eign conservatoires  have  been  studied  and  they 
want  to  introduce  some  of  their  features  here. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  the  foreign  conserv- 
atoires are  housed  in  magnificent  palaces  and 
their  curricula  are  elaborated  with  a  care  worthy 
of  admiration.  Whether  they  turn  out  better 
pupils  than  we  do  is  an  open  question.  It  is 
beyond  dispute,  however,  that  many  young  for- 
eigners come  to  us  for  their  education. 

Some  of  the  reformers  are  scandalized  at  the 
sight  of  a  musician  in  charge  of  a  school  where 
elocution  is  taught.  They  forget  that  a  musician 
may  also  be  a  man  of  letters — the  present  direc- 
tor combines  these  qualifications — and  that  it  is 
improbable  that  it  will  be  different  in  the  future. 

24 


THE  OLD  CONSERVATOIRE 

The  teachers  of  elocution  have  always  been  the 
best  that  could  be  found.  Although  M.  Faure 
is  a  musician,  he  has  known  how  to  bring  back 
the  classes  in  tragedy  to  their  original  purpose. 
For  a  time  they  tended  towards  an  objectionable 
modernism,  for  they  substituted  in  their  competi- 
tions modern  prose  for  the  classic  verse.  And 
the  study  of  the  latter  is  very  profitable. 

Not  only  is  there  no  harm  in  this  union  of  elo- 
cution and  music,  but  it  would  be  useful  if  sing- 
ers and  composers  would  take  advantage  of  it  to 
familiarize  themselves  with  the  principles  of  dic- 
tion, which,  in  my  opinion,  are  indispensable  to 
both.  Instead,  they  distrust  melody.  Decla- 
mation is  no  longer  wanted  in  operas,  and  the 
singers  make  the  works  incomprehensible  by  not 
articulating  the  words.  The  composers  tend 
along  the  same  lines,  for  they  give  no  indication 
or  direction  of  how  they  want  the  words  spoken. 
All  this  is  regrettable  and  should  be  reformed. 

As  you  see,  I  object  to  the  mania  for  reform 
and  end  by  suggesting  reforms  myself.  Well, 
one  must  be  of  one's  own  time,  and  there  is  no 
escaping  the  contagion. 

25 


CHAPTER  III 

VICTOR   HUGO 

Everything  in  my  youth  seemed  calculated  to 
keep  me  far  removed  from  romanticism.  Those 
about  me  talked  only  of  the  great  classics  and  I 
saw  them  welcome  Ponsard's  Lucrece  as  a  sort  of 
Minerva  whose  lance  was  to  route  Victor  Hugo 
and  his  foul  crew,  of  whom  they  never  spoke 
save  with  detestation. 

Who  was  it,  I  wonder,  who  had  the  happy  idea 
of  giving  me,  elegantly  bound,  the  first  volumes 
of  Victor  Hugo's  poems?  I  have  forgotten  who 
it  was,  but  I  remember  what  joy  the  vibrations  of 
his  lyre  gave  me.  Until  that  time  poetry  had 
seemed  to  me  something  cold,  respectable  and 
far-away,  and  it  was  much  later  that  the  living 
beauty  of  our  classics  was  revealed  to  me.  I 
found  myself  at  once  stirred  to  the  depths,  and, 
as  my  temperament  is  essentially  musical  in 
everything,  I  began  to  sing  them 

26 


VICTOR  HUGO 

People  have  told  me  ad  nauseam  (and  they 
still  tell  me  so)  that  beautiful  verse  is  inimical  to 
music,  or  rather  that  music  is  inimical  to  good 
verse;  that  music  demands  ordinary  verse, 
rhymed  prose,  rather  than  verse,  which  is  malle- 
able and  reducible  as  the  composer  wishes. 
This  generalization  is  assuredly  true,  if  the  music 
is  written  first  and  then  adapted  to  the  words,  but 
that  is  not  the  ideal  harmony  between  two  arts 
which  are  made  to  supplement  each  other.  Do 
not  the  rhythmic  and  sonorous  passages  of  verse 
naturally  call  for  song  to  set  them  off,  since  sing- 
ing is  but  a  better  method  of  declaiming  them? 
I  made  some  attempts  at  this  and  some  of  those 
which  have  been  preserved  are :  Puisque  id  has 
toute  time,  Le  Pas  d'armes  du  roi  Jean,  and  La 
Cloche.  They  were  ridiculed  at  the  time,  but 
destined  to  some  success  later.  Afterwards  I 
continued  with  Si  tu  veux  faisons  un  reve,  which 
Madame  Carvalho  sang  a  good  deal,  Soiree  en 
mer,  and  many  others. 

The  older  I  grew  the  greater  became  my  devo- 
tion to  Hugo.  I  waited  impatiently  for  each 
new  work  of  the  poet  and  I  devoured  it  as  soon  as 

27 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

it  appeared.  If  I  heard  about  me  the  spiteful 
criticisms  of  irritating  critics,  I  was  consoled  by 
talking  to  Berlioz  who  honored  me  with  his 
friendship  and  whose  admiration  for  Hugo 
equalled  mine.  In  the  meantime  my  literary 
education  was  improving,  and  I  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  classics  and  found  immortal 
beauties  in  them.  My  admiration  for  the  clas- 
sics, however,  did  not  diminish  my  regard  for 
Hugo,  for  I  never  could  see  why  it  was  unfaithful- 
ness to  him  not  to  despise  Racine.  It  was  fortu- 
nate for  me  that  this  was  my  view,  for  I  have  seen 
the  most  fiery  romanticists,  like  Meurice  and 
Vacquerie,  revert  to  Racine  in  their  later  years, 
and  repair  the  links  in  a  golden  chain  which 
should  never  have  been  broken. 

The  Empire  fell  and  Victor  Hugo  came  back 
to  Paris.  So  I  was  going  to  have  a  chance  of 
realizing  my  dream  of  seeing  him  and  hearing  his 
voice!  But  I  dreaded  meeting  him  almost  as 
much  as  I  wished  to  do  so.  Like  Rossini  Victor 
Hugo  received  his  friends  every  evening.  He 
came  forward  with  both  hands  outstretched  and 
told  me  what  pleasure  it  was  for  him  to  see  me  at 

28 


his  house.     Everything  whirled  around  me! 

"I  cannot  say  the  same  to  you,"  I  answered. 
"I  wish  I  were  somewhere  else."  He  laughed 
heartily  and  showed  that  he  knew  how  to  over- 
come my  bashfulness.  I  waited  to  hear  some  of 
the  conversation  which,  according  to  my  precon- 
ceived ideas,  would  be  in  the  style  of  his  latest  ro- 
mance. However,  it  was  entirely  different ;  sim- 
ple polished  phrases,  entirely  logical,  came  from 
that  "mouth  of  mystery." 

I  went  to  Hugo's  evenings  as  often  as  possible, 
for  I  never  could  drink  my  fill  of  the  presence  of 
the  hero  of  my  youthful  dreams.  I  had  occasion 
to  note  to  what  an  extent  a  fiery  republican,  a 
modern  Juvenal,  whose  verses  branded  "kings" 
as  if  with  a  red  hot  iron,  in  his  private  life  was 
susceptible  to  their  flattery.  The  Emperor  of 
Brazil  had  called  on  him,  and  the  next  day  he 
could  not  stop  talking  about  it  constantly. 
Rather  ostentatiously  he  called  him  "Don  Pedro 
d'Alcantara."  In  French  this  would  be  "M. 
Pierre  du  Pont."  Spanish  inherently  gives  such 
florid  sounds  to  ordinary  names.  This  florid 
style  is  not  frequent  in  French,  and  that  is  pre- 
29 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

cisely  what  Corneille  and  Victor  Hugo  succeeded 
in  giving  it. 

A  slight  incident  unfortunately  changed  my 
relations  with  the  great  poet. 

"As  long  as  Mile.  Bertin  was  alive,"  he  told 
me,  "I  would  never  permit  La  Esmeralda  to  be 
set  to  music;  but  if  some  musician  should  now 
ask  for  this  poem,  I  would  be  glad  to  let  him  have 


it.' 


The  invitation  was  obvious.  Yet,  as  is  gen- 
erally known,  this  dramatic  and  lyric  adaptation 
of  the  famous  romance  is  not  particularly  happy. 
I  was  much  embarrassed  and  I  pretended  not  to 
understand,  but  I  never  dared  to  go  to  Hugo's 
house  again. 

Years  passed.  In  1881  a  subscription  was 
taken  up  to  erect  a  statue  to  the  author  of  La 
Legende  des  Siecles,  and  they  began  to  plan  cele- 
brations for  its  dedication,  particularly  a  big 
affair  at  the  Trocadero.  My  imagination  took 
fire  at  the  idea,  and  I  wrote  my  Hymne  a  Victor 
Hugo. 

As  is  well  known,  the  master  knew  nothing  at 
all  about  music,  and  the  same  was  true  of  those 

30 


VICTOR  HUGO 

around  him.  It  is  a  matter  of  conjecture  how 
the  master  and  his  followers  happened  to  mistake 
some  absurd  and  formless  motif  for  one  of  Bee- 
thoven's sublime  inspirations.  Victor  Hugo 
adapted  the  beautiful  verses  of  Stella  to  this  halt- 
ing motif.  It  was  published  as  an  appendix  in 
the  Chdtiments,  with  a  remark  about  the  union  of 
two  geniuses,  the  fusion  of  the  verse  of  a  great 
poet  with  the  admirable  verse  of  a  great  musician. 
And  the  poet  would  have  Mme.  Drouet  play  this 
marvellous  music  on  the  piano  from  time  to  time ! 
Tristia  Herculis! 

As  I  wanted  to  put  in  my  hymn  something  pe- 
culiar to  Victor  Hugo,  which  could  not  possibly 
be  attributed  to  anyone  else,  I  tried  to  introduce 
this  motif  of  which  he  was  so  fond.  And,  by 
means  of  numerous  tricks  which  every  musician 
has  up  his  sleeve,  I  managed  to  give  it  the  form 
and  character  which  it  had  lacked. 

The  subscription  did  not  go  fast  enough  to  suit 
the  master,  and  he  had  it  stopped.  So  I  put  my 
hymn  in  a  drawer  and  waited  for  a  better  oppor- 
tunity. 

About  this  time  M.  Bruneau,  the  father  of  the 
31 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

well-known  composer,  conceived  the  idea  of  giv- 
ing spring  concerts  at  the  Trocadero.  Bruneau 
came  to  see  me  and  asked  me  if  I  had  some  un- 
published work  which  I  would  let  him  have. 
This  was  an  excellent  occasion  for  the  presenta- 
tion of  my  Hymne,  as  it  had  been  written  with  the 
Trocadero  in  mind.  The  performance  was  de- 
cided on  and  Victor  Hugo  was  invited  to  come 
and  hear  it. 

The  performance  was  splendid — a  large  or- 
chestra, the  magnificent  organ,  eight  harps,  and 
eight  trumpets  sounding  their  flourishes  in  the 
organ  loft,  and  a  large  chorus  for  the  peroration 
of  such  splendor  that  it  was  compared  to  the  set 
pieces  at  the  close  of  a  display  of  fireworks.  The 
reception  and  ovation  which  the  crowd  gave  the 
great  poet,  who  rarely  appeared  in  public,  was 
beyond  description.  The  honeyed  incense  of 
the  organ,  harps  and  trumpets  was  new  to  him 
and  pleased  his  Olympian  nostrils. 

"Dine  with  me  to-night,"  he  said  to  me.  And 
from  that  day  on,  I  often  dined  with  him  inform- 
ally with  M.  and  Mme.  Lockroy,  Meurice,  Vac- 
querie  and  other  close  friends.  The  fare  was 

32 


yiCTOR  HUGO 

(delightful  and  unpretentious,  and  the  conversa- 
tion was  the  same.  The  master  sat  at  the  head 
of  the  table,  with  his  grandson  and  grand- 
daughter on  either  side,  saying  little  but  always 
something  apropos.  Thanks  to  his  vigor,  his 
strong  sonorous  voice,  and  his  quiet  good  humor, 
he  did  not  seem  like  an  old  man,  but  rather  like 
an  ageless  and  immortal  being,  whom  Time 
would  never  touch.  His  presence  was  just  Jove- 
like  enough  to  inspire  respect  without  chilling 
his  followers.  These  small  gatherings,  which  I 
fully  appreciated,  are  among  the  most  precious 
recollections  of  my  life. 

Time,  alas,  goes  on,  and  that  fine  intellect, 
which  had  ever  been  unclouded,  began  to  give 
signs  of  aberration.  One  day  he  said  to  an  Ital- 
ian delegation,  "The  French  are  Italians;  the 
Italians  are  French.  French  and  Italians  ought 
to  go  to  Africa  together  and  found  the  United 
States  of  Europe." 

The  red  rays  of  twilight  announced  the  oncom- 
ing night. 

Those  who  saw  them  will  never  forget  his 
grandiose  funeral  ceremonies,  that  casket  under 

33 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  covered  with  a  veil  of 
crape,  and  that  immense  crowd  which  paid 
homage  to  the  greatest  lyric  poet  of  the  century. 

There  was  a  committee  to  make  musical  prep- 
arations and  I  was  a  member.  The  most  extraor- 
dinary ideas  were  proposed.  One  man  wanted 
to  have  the  Marseillaise  in  a  minor  key.  An- 
other wanted  violins,  for  "violins  produce  an  ex- 
cellent effect  in  the  open  air."  Naturally  we  got 
nowhere. 

The  great  procession  started  in  perfect  order, 
but,  as  in  all  long  processions,  gaps  occurred.  I 
was  astonished  to  find  myself  in  the  middle  of  the 
Champs  Elysees,  in  a  wide  open  space,  with  no 
one  near  me  but  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps,  Paul  Bert, 
and  a  member  of  the  Academic,  whose  name  I 
shall  not  mention  as  he  is  worthy  of  all  possible 
respect. 

De  Lesseps  was  then  at  the  height  of  his  glory, 
and  from  time  to  time  applause  greeted  him  as  he 
passed. 

Suddenly  the  Academician  leaned  over  and 
whispered  in  my  ear, 

"Evidently  they  are  applauding  us." 
34 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    HISTORY    OF    AN    OPERA-COMIQUE 

Young  musicians  often  complain,  and  not 
without  reason,  of  the  difficulties  of  their  careers. 
It  may,  perhaps,  be  useful  to  remind  them  that 
their  elders  have  not  always  had  beds  of  roses, 
and  that  too  often  they  have  had  to  breast  both 
wind  and  sea  after  spending  their  best  years  in 
port,  unable  to  make  a  start.  These  obstacles 
frequently  are  the  result  of  the  worst  sort  of  ma- 
lignity, when  it  is  for  the  best  interest  of  every- 
one— both  of  the  theatres  which  rebuff  them,  and 
the  public  which  ignores  them — that  they  be  per- 
mitted to  set  out  under  full  sail. 

In  1864  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  re- 
views had  the  following  comments  to  make  on 
this  subject: 

Our  real  duty — and  it  is  a  true  kindness — is 
not  to  encourage  them  (beginners)  but  to  dis- 

35 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

courage  them.  In  art  a  vocation  is  everything, 
and  a  vocation  needs  no  one,  for  God  aids. 
What  use  is  it  to  encourage  them  and  their  efforts 
when  the  public  obstinately  refuses  to  pay  any 
attention  to  them?  If  an  act  is  ordered  from 
one  of  them,  it  fails  to  go.  Two  or  three  years 
later  the  same  thing  is  tried  again  with  the  same 
result.  No  theatre,  even  if  it  were  four  times  as 
heavily  subsidized  as  the  Theatre-Lyrique,  could 
continue  to  exist  on  such  resources.  So  the  re- 
sult is  that  they  turn  to  accredited  talent  and  call 
on  such  men  from  outside  as  Gounod,  Felicien 
David  and  Victor  Masse.  The  younger  compos- 
ers at  once  shout  treason  and  scandal.  Then, 
they  select  masterpieces  by  Mozart  and  Weber 
and  there  are  the  same  outcries  and  recrimina- 
tions. In  the  final  analysis  where  are  these 
young  composers  of  genius  ?  Who  are  they  and 
what  are  their  names?  Let  them  go  to  the  or- 
chestra and  hear  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro,  0  her  on, 
Freischutz  and  Orphee  ...  we  are  doing  some- 
thing for  them  by  placing  such  models  before 
them. 

The  young  composers  who  were  thus  politely 
invited  to  be  seated  included,  among  others, 
Bizet,  Delibes,  Massenet,  and  the  writer  of  these 

36 


•c 

03 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

lines.  Massenet  and  I  would  have  been  satis- 
fied with  writing  a  ballet  for  the  Opera.  He  pro- 
posed the  Rat  Catcher  from  an  old  German  tale, 
while  I  proposed  Une  nuit  de  Cleopatra  on  the 
text  of  Theophile  Gautier.  They  refused  us  the 
honor,  and,  when  they  consented  to  order  a  ballet 
from  Delibes,  they  did  not  dare  to  trust  him  with 
the  whole  work.  They  let  him  do  only  one  act 
and  the  other  was  given  to  a  Hungarian  com- 
poser. As  the  experiment  succeeded,  they  al- 
lowed Delibes  to  write,  without  assistance,  his 
marvellous  Coppelia.  But  Delibes  had  the  le- 
gitimate ambition  of  writing  a  grand  opera.  He 
never  reached  so  far. 

Bizet  and  I  were  great  friends  and  we  told  each 
other  all  our  troubles.  "You're  less  unfortunate 
than  I  am,"  he  used  to  tell  me.  "You  can  do 
something  besides  things  for  the  stage.  I  can't. 
That's  my  only  resource." 

When  Bizet  put  on  the  delightful  Pecheurs  de 
Perles — he  was  helped  by  powerful  influences — 
there  was  a  general  outcry  and  an  outbreak  of 
abuse.  The  Devil  himself  straight  from  Hell 
would  not  have  received  a  worse  reception. 

37 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Later  on,  as  we  know,  Carmen  was  received  in  the 
same  way. 

I  was,  indeed,  able  to  do  something  beside 
work  for  the  stage,  and  it  was  just  that  which 
closed  the  stage  to  me.  I  was  a  writer  of  sym- 
phonies, an  organist  and  a  pianist,  so  how  could 
I  be  capable  of  writing  an  opera !  The  qualities 
which  go  to  make  a  pianist  were  in  a  particularly 
bad  light  in  the  greenroom.  Bizet  played  the 
piano  admirably,  but  he  never  dared  to  play  in 
public  for  fear  of  making  his  position  worse. 

I  suggested  to  Carvalho  that  I  write  a  Macbeth 
for  Madame  Viardot.  Naturally  enough  he  pre- 
ferred to  put  on  Verdi's  Macbeth.  It  was  an 
utter  failure  and  cost  him  thirty  thousand  francs. 

They  tried  to  interest  a  certain  princess,  a 
patron  of  the  arts,  in  my  behalf.  "What,"  she 
replied,  "isn't  he  satisfied  with  his  position? 
He  plays  the  organ  at  the  Madeleine  and  the  pi- 
ano at  my  house.  Isn't  that  enough  for  him?" 

But  that  wasn't  enough  for  me,  and  to  over- 
come the  obstacles,  I  caused  a  scandal.  At  the 
age  of  twenty-eight  I  competed  for  the  Prix  de 
Rome  !  They  did  not  give  it  to  me  on  the  ground 

38 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

that  I  didn't  need  it,  but  the  day  after  the  award, 
Auber,  who  was  very  fond  of  me,  asked  Carvalho 
for  a  libretto  for  me.  Carvalho  gave  me  Le  Tim- 
bre d' Argent,  which  he  didn't  know  what  to  do 
with  as  several  musicians  had  refused  to  touch  it. 
There  were  good  reasons  for  this,  for,  despite  an 
excellent  foundation  for  the  music,  the  libretto 
had  serious  faults.  I  demanded  that  Barbier 
and  Carre,  the  authors,  should  make  important 
changes,  which  they  did  at  once.  Then,  I  retired 
to  the  heights  of  Louveciennes  and  in  two  months 
wrote  the  score  of  the  five  acts  which  the  work 
had  at  first. 

I  had  to  wait  two  years  before  Carvalho  would 
consent  to  hear  the  music.  Finally,  worn  out  by 
my  importunities,  they  decided  to  get  rid  of  me, 
so  Carvalho  invited  me  to  dine  with  him  and  to 
bring  my  score.  After  dinner  I  went  to  the 
piano.  Carvalho  was  on  one  side  and  Madame 
Carvalho  on  the  other.  Both  were  very  pleas- 
ant and  charming,  but  the  real  meaning  of  this 
friendliness  did  not  escape  me. 

They  had  no  doubts  about  what  awaited  them. 
Both  really  loved  music  and  little  by  little  they 

39 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

fell  under  the  spell.  Serious  attention  suc- 
ceeded the  false  friendliness.  At  the  end  they 
were  enthusiastic.  Carvalho  declared  that  he 
would  have  the  study  of  the  work  begun  as  soon 
as  possible ;  it  was  a  masterpiece ;  it  would  have  a 
great  success,  but  to  assure  this  success,  Madame 
Carvalho  must  sing  the  principal  part. 

Now  the  principal  part  in  Le  Timbre  d?  Argent 
is  that  of  a  dancer  and  the  singer's  part  is  greatly 
subordinate.  To  remedy  this  they  decided  to 
develop  the  part.  Barbier  invented  a  pretty  sit- 
uation to  bring  in  the  passage  Bonheur  est  chose 
legere,  but  that  wasn't  enough.  Barbier  and 
Carre  racked  their  brains  without  finding  any  so- 
lution of  the  difficulty,  for  on  the  stage  as  else- 
where there  are  problems  that  can't  be  solved. 

Between  times  they  tried  to  find  a  dancer  of  the 
first  rank.  Finally,  they  found  one  who  had  re- 
cently left  the  Opera,  although  still  at  the  height 
of  her  beauty  and  talent.  And  they  continued  to 
seek  a  way  to  make  the  part  of  Helene  worthy  of 
Madame  Carvalho. 

The  famous  director  had  one  mania.  He 
wanted  to  collaborate  in  every  work  he  staged. 

40 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

Even  a  work  hallowed  by  time  and  success  had  to 
bear  his  mark ;  much  greater  were  his  reasons  for 
interpolating  in  a  new  work.  He  would  an- 
nounce brusquely  that  the  period  or  the  country 
in  which  the  action  of  the  work  took  place  must 
be  changed.  He  tormented  us  for  a  long  time 
to  make  the  dancer  into  a  singer  on  his  wife's 
account.  Later,  he  wanted  to  introduce  a  sec- 
ond dancer.  With  the  exception  of  the  prologue 
and  epilogue  the  action  of  the  piece  takes  place  in 
a  dream,  and  he  took  upon  himself  the  invention 
of  the  most  bizarre  combinations.  He  even  pro- 
posed to  me  one  day  to  introduce  wild  animals. 
Another  time  he  wanted  to  cut  out  all  the  music 
with  the  exception  of  the  choruses  and  the  danc- 
er's part,  and  have  the  rest  played  by  a  dramatic 
company.  Later,  as  they  were  rehearsing  Ham- 
let at  the  Opera  and  it  was  rumored  that  Mile. 
Nilsson  was  going  to  play  a  water  scene,  he 
wanted  Madame  Carvalho  to  go  to  the  bottom  of 
a  pool  to  find  the  fatal  bell. 

Foolishness  of  this  kind  took  up  two  years. 

Finally,  we  gave  up  the  idea  of  Mme.  Carval- 
ho's  cooperation.  The  part  of  Helene  was 

41 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

given  to  beautiful  Mile.  Schroeder  and  the  re- 
hearsals began.  They  were  interrupted  by  the 
failure  of  the  Theatre-Lyrique. 

Shortly  afterwards  Perrin  asked  for  Le  Timbre 
d' Argent  for  the  Opera.  The  adaptation  of  the 
work  for  the  large  stage  at  the  Opera  necessi- 
tated important  modifications.  The  whole  of 
the  dialogue  had  to  be  set  to  music  and  the 
authors  went  to  work  on  it.  Perrin  gave  us 
Madame  Carvalho  for  Helene  and  Faure  for  Spi- 
ridion,  but  he  wanted  to  burlesque  the  part  for 
the  tenor  and  give  it  to  Mile.  Wertheimber.  He 
wanted  to  engage  her  and  had  no  other  part  for 
her.  This  was  impossible.  After  several  dis- 
cussions Perrin  yielded  to  the  obstinate  refusals 
of  the  authors,  but  I  saw  clearly  from  his  attitude 
that  he  would  never  play  our  work. 

About  that  time  du  Locle  took  over  the  man- 
agement of  the  Opera-Comique.  He  saw  that 
Perrin,  who  was  his  uncle,  had  decided  not  to 
stage  Le  Timbre  d' Argent  and  asked  me  for  it. 

This  meant  another  metamorphosis  for  the 
work  and  new  and  considerable  work  for  the  mu- 
sician. And  this  work  was  by  no  means  easy. 

42 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

Until  this  time  Barbier  and  Carre  had  been  as 
close  friends  as  Orestes  and  Pylades,  but  now 
they  had  a  falling  out.  What  one  proposed,  the 
other  systematically  refused.  One  lived  in 
Paris;  the  other  in  the  country.  I  went  from 
Paris  to  the  country  and  from  the  country  to 
Paris  trying  to  get  these  warring  brothers  to 
agree.  This  going  to  and  fro  lasted  all  summer, 
and  then  the  temporary  enemies  came  to  an  un- 
derstanding and  became  as  friendly  as  ever. 

We  seemed  to  be  nearly  at  the  end  of  our 
troubles.  Du  Locle  had  found  a  wonderful 
dancer  in  Italy  on  whom  we  depended,  but  the 
dancer  turned  out  not  to  be  one  at  all.  She  was 
a  mime,  and  did  not  dance. 

As  there  was  no  time  to  look  for  another 
dancer  that  season  du  Locle,  to  keep  me  patient, 
had  me  write  with  Louis  Gallet  La  Princesse 
Jaune,  with  which  I  made  my  debut  on  the  stage. 
I  was  thirty-five !  This  harmless  little  work  was 
received  with  the  fiercest  hostility.  "It  is  impos- 
sible to  tell,"  wrote  Jouvin,  a  much  feared  critic 
of  the  time,  "in  what  key  or  in  what  time  the  over- 
ture is  written."  And  to  show  me  how  utterly 

43 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

wrong  I  was,  he  told  me  that  the  public  was  "a 
compound  of  angles  and  shadows."  His  prose 
was  certainly  more  obscure  than  my  music. 

Finally,  a  real  dancer  was  engaged  in  Italy. 
It  seemed  as  though  nothing  more  could  prevent 
the  appearance  of  the  unfortunate  Timbre.  "I 
can't  believe  it,"  I  said.  "Some  catastrophe  will 
put  us  off  again." 

War  came ! 

When  that  frightful  crisis  was  at  an  end,  the 
dancer  was  re-engaged.  The  parts  were  read  to 
the  artists,  and  the  next  day  Amede  Achard  threw 
up  his  role,  declaring  that  it  belonged  to  grand 
opera  and  was  beyond  the  powers  of  an  opera- 
comique  tenor.  It  is  well  known  that  he  ended 
his  career  at  the  Opera. 

Another  tenor  had  to  be  found,  but  tenors  are 
rare  birds  and  we  were  unable  to  get  one.  To 
use  the  dancer  he  had  engaged  du  Locle  had 
Gallet  and  Guiraud  improvise  a  short  act,  Le  Ko- 
bold,  which  met  with  great  success.  The  dancer 
was  exquisite.  Then  du  Locle  lost  interest  in 
Le  Timbre  d9  Argent;  and  then  came  the  failure 
of  the  Opera-Comique. 

44 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

During  all  these  tribulations  I  was  preparing 
Samson,  although  I  could  find  no  one  who  even 
wanted  to  hear  me  speak  of  it.  They  all  thought 
that  I  must  be  mad  to  attempt  a  Biblical  subject. 
I  gave  a  hearing  of  the  second  act  at  my  house, 
but  no  one  understood  it  at  all.  Without  the  aid 
of  Liszt,  who  did  not  know  a  note  of  it,  but  who 
engaged  me  to  finish  it  and  put  it  on  at  Weimar, 
Samson  would  never  have  seen  the  light.  After- 
wards it  was  refused  in  succession  by  Halanzier, 
Vaucorbeil,  and  Ritt  and  Gailhard,  who  decided 
to  take  it  only  after  they  had  heard  it  sung  by  that 
admirable  singer  Rosine  Bloch. 

But  to  return  to  Le  Timbre  d' Argent.  I  was 
again  on  the  street  with  my  score  under  my  arm. 
About  that  time  Vizentini  revived  the  Theatre- 
Lyrique.  His  first  play  was  Paul  et  Virginie,  a 
wonderful  success,  and  he  was  preparing  for  the 
close  of  the  season  another  work  which  he  liked. 
They  were  kindly  disposed  to  me  at  the  Ministry 
of  Fine  Arts  and  they  interested  themselves  in  my 
misfortunes.  So  they  gave  the  Theatre-Lyrique 
a  small  subsidy  on  condition  that  they  play  my 
work.  I  came  to  the  theatre  as  one  who  has  med- 

45 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

died  and  I  quickly  recognized  the  discomforts  of 
my  position.  First,  there  was  a  search  for  a 
singer;  then,  for  a  tenor,  and  they  tried  several 
without  success.  I  found  a  tenor  who,  accord- 
ing to  all  reports,  was  of  the  first  rank,  but,  after 
several  days  of  negotiation,  the  matter  was 
dropped.  I  learned  later  from  the  artist  that  the 
manager  intended  to  engage  him  for  only  four 
performances,  evidently  planning  that  the  work 
should  be  played  only  four  times. 

The  choice  finally  fell  on  Blum.  He  had  a 
fine  voice,  and  was  a  perfect  singer  but  no  actor. 
Indeed  he  said  he  didn't  want  to  be  an  actor;  his 
ideal  was  to  appear  in  white  gloves.  Each  day 
brought  new  bickerings.  They  made  cuts  de- 
spite my  wishes ;  they  left  me  at  the  mercy  of  the 
insubordination  and  rudeness  of  the  stage  man- 
ager and  the  ballet  master,  who  would  not  listen 
to  my  most  modest  suggestions.  I  had  to  pay 
the  cost  of  extra  musicians  in  the  wings  myself. 
Some  stage  settings  which  I  wanted  for  the  pro- 
logue were  declared  impossible — I  have  seen 
them  since  in  the  Tales  of  Hoffman. 

46 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

Furthermore,  the  orchestra  was  very  ordinary. 
There  had  to  be  numerous  rehearsals  which  they 
did  not  refuse  me,  but  they  took  advantage  of 
them  to  spread  the  report  that  my  music  was  un- 
playable. A  young  journalist  who  is  still  alive 
(I  will  not  name  him)  wrote  two  advance  notices 
which  were  intended  to  pave  the  way  for  the  fail- 
ure of  my  work. 

At  the  last  moment  the  director  saw  that  he 
had  been  on  the  wrong  tack  and  that  he  might 
have  a  success.  As  they  had  played  fairyland 
in  the  theatre  in  the  Square  des-Arts-et-Metiers, 
he  had  at  hand  all  the  needed  material  to  give  me 
a  luxurious  stage-setting  without  great  expense. 
Mile.  Caroline  Salla  was  given  the  part  of  Helene. 
With  her  beauty  and  magnificent  voice  she  was 
certainly  remarkable.  But  the  passages  which 
had  been  written  for  the  light  high  soprano  of 
Madame  Carvalho  were  poorly  adapted  for  a  dra- 
matic soprano.  They  concluded,  therefore,  that 
I  didn't  know  how  to  write  vocal  music. 

In  spite  of  everything  the  work  was  markedly 
successful,  the  natural  result  of  a  splendid  per- 

47 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

f  ormance  in  which  two  stars — Melchissedech  and 
Mile.  Adeline  Theodore,  at  present  teacher  of 
dancing  at  the  Opera — shone. 

Poor  Vizentini!  His  opinion  of  me  has 
changed  greatly  since  that  time.  We  were  made 
to  understand  and  love  each  other,  so  he  has  be- 
come, with  years,  one  of  my  best  and  most  de- 
voted friends.  He  first  produced  my  ballet 
Javotte  at  the  Grand-Theatre  in  Lyons,  which  the 
Monnaie  in  Brussels  had  ordered  and  then  re- 
fused. He  had  dreams  of  directing  the  Opera- 
Comique  and  installing  Le  Timbre  d'Argent 
there.  Fate  willed  otherwise. 

We  have  seen  how  the  young  French  school 
was  encouraged  under  the  Empire.  The  situa- 
tion has  improved  and  the  old  state  of  affairs  has 
never  returned.  But  we  find  more  than  one 
analogy  between  the  old  point  of  view  and  the  one 
that  was  revealed  not  long  ago  when  the  French 
musicians  complained  that  they  were  more  or  less 
sacrificed  in  favor  of  their  foreign  contempora- 
ries. At  bottom  it  is  the  same  spirit  in  a  modi- 
fied form. 

To  resume.  As  everyone  knows,  the  way  to 
48 


THE  HISTORY  OF  AN  OPERA-COMIQUE 

become  a  blacksmith  is  by  working  at  a  forge. 
Sitting  in  the  shade  does  not  give  the  experience 
which  develops  talent.  We  should  never  have 
known  the  great  days  of  the  Italian  theatre,  if 
Rossini,  Donizetti,  Bellini,  and  Verdi  had  had  to 
undergo  our  regime.  If  Mozart  had  had  to  wait 
until  he  was  forty  to  produce  his  first  opera,  we 
should  never  have  had  Don  Giovanni  or  Le  Nozze 
di  Figaro,  for  Mozart  died  at  thirty-five. 

The  policy  imposed  on  Bizet  and  Delibes  cer- 
tainly deprived  us  of  several  works  which  would 
now  be  among  the  glories  of  the  repertoire  at  the 
Opera  and  the  Opera-Comio^ie.  That  is  an  ir- 
reparable misfortune;  one  which  we  cannot  suf- 
ficiently deplore. 


49 


CHAPTER  V 

LOUIS    GALLET 

As  Dejanire,  cast  in  a  new  form,  has  again  ap- 
peared in  the  vast  frame  of  the  Opera  stage,  I  may 
be  allowed  to  recall  my  recollections  of  my  friend 
and  collaborator,  Louis  Gallet,  the  diligent  and 
chosen  companion  of  my  best  years,  whose  sup- 
port was  so  dear  and  precious  to  me.  Collabora- 
tion for  some  reason  unknown  to  me  is  depre- 
cated. Opera,  it  is  said,  should  spring  from  the 
brain  like  Minerva,  fully  armed.  So  much  the 
better  if  such  divine  intellects  can  be  found,  but 
they  are  rare  and  always  will  be.  For  dramatic 
and  literary  art  on  the  one  hand  and  musical  art 
on  the  other  require  different  powers,  which  are 
not  ordinarily  found  in  the  same  person. 

I  first  met  Louis  Gallet  in  1871.  Camille  du 
Locle,  who  was  the  manager  of  the  Opera-Com- 
ique  at  the  time,  could  not  put  on  Le  Timbre 
d?  Argent,  and  while  he  waited  for  better  days, 

50 


LOUIS  GALLET 

which  never  came,  to  do  that,  he  offered  me  a 
one-act  work.  He  proposed  Louis  Gallet  as  my 
collaborator,  although  I  had  not  known  him  until 
then.  "You  were  made  to  understand  each 
other,"  he  told  me.  Gallet  was  then  employed 
in  some  capacity  at  the  Beaujon  hospital  and 
lived  near  me  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Honore. 
We  soon  formed  the  habit  of  seeing  each  other 
every  day.  Du  Locle  had  judged  aright.  We 
had  the  same  tastes  in  art  and  literature.  We 
were  equally  averse  to  whatever  is  too  theatrical 
and  also  to  whatever  is  not  sufficiently  so,  to  the 
commonplace  and  the  too  extravagant.  We 
both  despised  easy  success  and  we  understood 
each  other  wonderfully.  Gallet  was  not  a  mu- 
sician, but  he  enjoyed  and  understood  music,  and 
he  criticised  with  rare  good  taste. 

Japan  had  recently  been  opened  to  Europeans. 
Japan  was  fashionable ;  all  they  talked  about  was 
Japan,  it  was  a  real  craze.  So  the  idea  of  writing 
a  Japanese  piece  occurred  to  us.  We  submitted 
the  idea  to  du  Locle,  but  he  was  afraid  of  an  en- 
tirely Japanese  stage  setting.  He  wanted  us  to 
soften  the  Japanese  part,  and  it  was  he,  I  think, 

51 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

who  had  the  idea  of  making  it  half  Japanese  and 
half  Dutch,  the  way  the  slight  work  La  Princesse 
Jaune  was  cast. 

That  was  only  a  beginning  and  in  our  daily 
talks  we  sketched  the  most  audacious  projects. 
The  leading  concerts  of  the  time  did  not  halk  at 
performing  large  vocal  works,  as  they  too  often 
do  to-day  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  variety  of 
their  programmes.  We  then  thought  that  we 
were  at  the  beginning  of  the  prosperity  of  French 
oratorio  which  only  needed  encouragement  to 
flourish.  I  read  by  chance  in  an  old  Bible  this 
wonderful  phrase, 

"And  it  repented  the  Lord  that  he  had  made 
man  on  the  earth,"  and  so  I  proposed  to  Gallet 
that  we  do  a  Deluge.  At  first  he  wanted  to  intro- 
duce characters.  "No,"  I  said,  "put  the  Bible 
narrative  into  simple  verse,  and  I  will  do  the 
rest."  We  know  with  what  care  and  success  he 
accomplished  his  delicate  task.  Meanwhile  he 
gave  Massenet  the  texts  for  Marie-Madeleine  and 
Le  Roi  de  Lahore,  and  these  two  works  created  a 
great  stir  in  the  operatic  world. 

We  had  dreams  of  historical  opera,  for  we  were 
52 


LOUIS  GALLET 

quite  without  the  prejudice  against  this  form  of 
drama  which  afflicts  the  present  school.  But  I 
was  not  persona  grata  to  the  managers  and  I  did 
not  know  at  what  door  to  knock,  when  one  of  my 
friends,  Aime  Gros,  took  the  management  of  the 
Grand-Theatre  at  Lyons  and  asked  me  for  a  work. 
This  was  a  fine  opportunity  and  we  grasped  it. 
We  put  together,  with  difficulty  but  with  infinite 
zest,  our  historical  opera,  Etienne  Marcel,  in 
which  Louis  Gallet  endeavored  to  respect  as  far 
as  is  possible  in  a  theatrical  work  the  facts  of 
history.  Despite  illustrious  examples  to  the 
contrary  he  did  not  believe  that  it  was  legitimate 
to  attribute  to  a  character  who  has  actually  lived 
acts  and  opinions  that  are  entirely  fanciful.  I 
was  in  full  agreement  with  him  in  that  as  in  so 
many  other  things.  I  go  even  farther  and  can- 
not accustom  myself  to  the  queer  sauces  in  which 
legendary  characters  are  often  served.  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  legend  is  the  interesting  thing,  and 
not  the  character,  and  that  the  latter  loses  all  its 
value  when  the  legend  which  surrounds  it  is  de- 
stroyed. But  everyone  knows  that  I  am  a  crank. 
Some  time  after  my  Henri  Vlll,  in  which  Vau- 
53 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

corbeil  had  imposed  another  collaborator  on  me, 
Ritt  asked  me  for  a  new  work.  We  were  looking 
about  for  a  subject,  when  Gallet  came  to  my 
house  and  timidly,  as  if  fearing  a  rebuff,  proposed 
Benvenuto  Cellini.  I  had  thought  of  that  for  a 
long  time,  and  the  idea  had  come  to  me  of  putting 
into  musical  form  that  fine  drama,  which  had  had 
its  hours  of  glory,  where  Melingue  modeled  the 
statue  of  Hebe  before  the  populace.  I,  there- 
fore, accepted  the  suggestion  with  pleasure. 
This  enterprise  brought  me  in  touch  with  Paul 
Meurice,  whom  I  had  known  in  my  childhood, 
when  he  was  wooing  Mile.  Granger,  his  first  wife 
and  an  intimate  friend  of  my  mother's.  Paul 
Meurice  revealed  a  secret  to  me :  that  the  romance 
Ascanio,  attributed  to  Alexander  Dumas,  had 
been  entirely  written  by  Meurice.  The  work 
met  with  a  great  success,  and  out  of  gratitude, 
Dumas  offered  to  help  Meurice  in  constructing  a 
drama  from  the  romance,  which  was  to  be  signed 
by  Meurice  alone.  So  it  is  easy  for  one  who 
knows  Dumas's  dramas  to  find  traces  of  his  handi- 
work in  Benvenuto  Cellini. 

It  was  not  particularly  easy  to  make  an  opera 
54 


LOUIS  GALLET 

out  of  the  play,  and  Gallet  and  I  worked  together 
at  it  with  considerable  difficulty.  We  soon  saw 
that  we  should  have  to  eliminate  the  famous  scene 
of  the  casting  of  the  statue.  When  we  reached 
this  point  in  the  play,  Benvenuto  had  already 
done  a  good  deal  of  singing,  and  this  scene  with 
its  violence  seemed  certain  to  exceed  the  strength 
of  the  most  valiant  artist. 

In  connection  with  our  Proserpine,  I  have 
been  accused  of  supposing  that  Vacquerie  had 
genius.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  he  had 
genius,  but  he  certainly  had  great  talent.  His 
prose  showed  a  classical  refinement,  and  his 
poetry,  in  spite  of  fantastic  passages  which  no 
one  could  admire,  was  sonorous  in  tone,  con- 
tained precious  material,  and  was  both  interest- 
ing and  highly  individual.  What  allured  me  in 
Proserpine  was  the  amount  of  inner  emotion 
there  was  in  the  drama,  which  is  very  advantag- 
eous to  the  music.  Music  gives  expression  to 
feelings  which  the  characters  cannot  express,  and 
accentuates  and  develops  the  picturesqueness  of 
the  piece;  it  makes  acceptable  what  would  not 
even  exist  without  it. 

55 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Vacquerie  approved  highly  the  convent  scene 
\vhich  Gallet  invented.  This  introduced  a  quiet 
and  peaceful  note  amidst  the  violence  of  the  or- 
iginal work.  Gallet  wrote  a  sonnet  in  Alexan- 
drine verse  for  Sabatino's  declaration  of  his  love. 
I  was  unable  to  set  this  to  music,  for  the  twelve 
feet  embarrassed  me  and  prevented  my  getting 
into  my  stride.  As  I  did  not  know  what  else  to 
do,  I  took  the  sonnet  and  by  main  force  reduced 
the  verse  to  ten  feet  with  a  caesura  at  the  fifth 
foot.  I  took  this  to  my  dear  collaborator  in  fear 
and  trembling,  and,  as  I  had  feared,  he  at  once 
fell  into  the  depths  of  despair. 

"That  was  the  best  thing  in  my  work,"  he  said. 
"I  nursed  and  caressed  that  sonnet,  and  now  you 
have  ruined  it." 

In  the  face  of  this  despair,  I  screwed  up  my 
courage.  As  I  had  previously  cut  down  the 
verse,  I  now  tried  lengthening  out  the  music. 
Then,  I  sang  both  versions  to  the  disconsolate 
poet. 

And  what  a  miracle !  He  was  altogether  rec- 
onciled, approved  both  versions,  and  did  not 
know  which  one  to  choose.  We  ended  with  a 

56 


LOUIS  GALLET 

patchwork.  The  two  quatrains  are  in  verses  of 
ten  feet,  and  the  two  tiercels  in  Alexandrine 
metre. 

Outside  of  our  work,  too,  our  relations  were 
delightful.  We  wrote  to  each  other  constantly 
in  both  prose  and  verse;  we  bombarded  each 
other  with  sonnets ;  his  letters  were  sometimes  or- 
namented with  water  colors,  for  he  drew  very 
well  and  one  of  his  joys  was  to  cover  white  paper 
with  color.  Gallet  drew  the  sketches  for  the 
desert  in  Le  Roi  de  Lahore  and  the  cloister  in 
Proserpine. 

When  Madame  Adam  founded  the  Nouvelle 
Revue  she  offered  me  the  position  of  musical 
critic,  which  I  did  not  think  I  ought  to  accept. 
She  did  not  know  where  to  turn.  "Take  Gal- 
let,"  I  advised  her.  "He  is  an  accomplished 
man  of  letters.  He  is  not  a  musician  in  the  sense 
that  he  has  studied  music,  but  he  has  the  soul  of  a 
musician,  which  is  worth  much  more."  Ma- 
dame Adam  followed  my  advice  and  found  it 
good. 

At  this  period,  under  the  guise  of  Wagnerism, 
the  wildest  theories  and  the  most  extravagant  as- 

57 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

sertions  were  current  in  musical  criticism.  Gal- 
let  was  naturally  well  poised  and  independent 
and  he  did  not  do  as  the  rest  did.  Instead  he 
opposed  them,  but  from  unwillingness  to  give 
needless  offense  he  displayed  marked  tact  and 
discretion  in  his  criticisms.  This  did  him  no 
good,  however,  for  it  aroused  no  sentiment  of 
gratitude,  and  without  giving  him  credit  for  a  lit' 
erary  style  that  was  rare  among  librettists,  his 
contemporaries  received  each  of  his  works  with  a 
hostility  entirely  devoid  of  either  justice  or  mercy. 
Gallet  felt  this  hostility  keenly.  He  felt  that  he 
did  not  deserve  it,  since  he  took  so  much  care  in 
his  work  and  put  so  much  courtesy  into  his  crit- 
icism. The  blank  verse  he  used  in  Thais  with 
admirable  regard  for  color  and  harmony,  count- 
ing on  the  music  to  take  the  place  of  the  rhyme, 
was  not  appreciated.  This  verse  was  free  from 
assonance  and  the  banalities  which  it  draws  into 
operatic  works,  but  it  kept  the  rhythm  and  sonor- 
ous sound  which  is  far  removed  from  prose. 
That  was  the  period  when  there  was  nothing  but 
praise  for  Alfred  Ernst's  gibberish,  though  that 
was  an  insult  alike  to  the  French  language  and 

58 


LOUIS  GALLET 

the  masterpieces  he  had  the  temerity  to  translate. 
Gallet  used  the  same  blank  verse  in  Dejanire,  al- 
though its  use  here  was  more  debatable,  but  he 
handled  it  with  surprising  skill.  Now  that  this 
text  has  been  set  to  music,  it  shows  its  full  beauty. 

Louis  Gallet  devoted  a  large  part  of  his  time 
to  administrative  duties,  for  he  was  successively 
treasurer  and  manager  of  hospitals.  Neverthe- 
less he  produced  works  in  abundance.  He  left  a 
record  of  no  less  than  forty  operatic  librettos, 
plays,  romances,  memoirs,  pamphlets,  and  innu- 
merable articles.  I  wish  I  knew  what  to  say 
about  the  man  himself, — his  unwearying  good- 
ness, his  loyalty,  his  scrupulousness,  his  good 
humor,  his  originality,  his  continual  common 
sense,  and  his  intellect,  alert  to  everything  un- 
usual and  interesting. 

What  good  talks  we  used  to  have  as  we  dined 
under  an  arbor  in  the  large  garden  which  was  his 
delight  at  Lariboisiere !  I  used  to  take  him 
seeds,  and  he  made  amusing  botanical  experi- 
ments with  them. 

He  was  seriously  ill  at  one  period  of  his  life. 
He  was  wonderfully  nursed  by  his  wife — who 

59 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

was  a  saint — and  he  endured  prolonged  and  atro- 
cious sufferings  with  the  patience  of  a  saint. 
He  watched  the  growth  of  his  fatal  disease  with  a 
stoicism  worthy  of  the  sages  of  antiquity  and  he 
had  no  illusion  about  the  implacable  illness 
which  slowly  but  surely  would  result  in  his  pre- 
mature death.  A  constantly  increasing  deafness 
was  his  greatest  trouble.  This  cruel  infirmity 
had  made  frightful  progress  when,  in  1899,  the 
Arenes  de  Beziers  opened  its  doors  for  the  second 
time  to  Dejanire.  In  spite  of  everything,  includ- 
ing his  ill  health  which  made  the  trip  very  pain- 
ful, he  wanted  to  see  his  work  once  more.  He 
heard  nothing,  however — neither  the  artists,  the 
choruses,  nor  even  the  applause  of  the  several 
thousand  spectators  who  encored  it  enthusiastic- 
ally. A  little  later  he  passed  on,  leaving  in  his 
friends'  hearts  and  at  the  work-tables  of  his  col- 
laborators a  void  which  it  is  impossible  to  fill. 


60 


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CHAPTER  VI 

HISTORY   AND    MYTHOLOGY   IN    OPERA 

Oceans  of  ink  have  been  spilled  in  discussing 
the  question  of  whether  the  subjects  of  operas 
should  be  taken  from  history  or  mythology,  and 
the  question  is  still  a  mooted  one.  To  my  mind 
it  would  have  been  better  if  the  question  had 
never  been  raised,  for  it  is  of  little  consequence 
what  the  answer  is.  The  only  things  worth 
while  are  whether  the  music  is  good  and  the  work 
interesting.  But  Tannhauser,  Lohengrin,  Tris- 
tan and  Siegfried  appeared  and  the  question 
sprang  up.  The  heroes  of  mythology,  we  are 
told,  are  invested  with  a  prestige  which  historical 
characters  can  never  have.  Their  deeds  lose  sig- 
nificance and  in  their  place  we  have  their  feel- 
ings, their  emotions,  to  the  great  benefit  of  the 
operas.  After  these  works,  however,  Hans 
Sachs  (Die  Meistersinger)  appeared,  and  al- 

61 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

though  he  is  not  mythical  at  all  he  is  a  fine  figure 
nevertheless.  But  in  this  case  the  plot  is  of  little 
account,  for  the  interest  lies  mainly  in  the  emo- 
tions— the  only  thing,  it  appears,  which  music 
with  its  divine  language  ought  to  express. 

It  is  true  that  music  makes  it  possible  to  sim- 
plify dramatic  action  and  it  gives  a  chance,  as 
well,  for  the  free  expression  and  play  of  senti- 
ments, emotions  and  passions.  In  addition, 
music  makes  possible  pantomimic  scenes  which 
could  not  be  done  otherwise,  and  the  music  itself 
flows  more  easily  under  such  conditions.  But 
that  does  not  mean  that  such  conditions  are  in- 
dispensable for  music.  Music  in  its  flexibility 
and  adaptability  offers  inexhaustible  resources. 
Give  Mozart  a  fairy  tale  like  the  Magic  Flute  or  a 
lively  comedy  such  as  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro  and  he 
creates  without  effort  an  immortal  masterpiece. 

It  is  a  question  whether  there  is  any  essential 
difference  between  history  and  mythology.  His- 
tory is  made  up  of  what  probably  happened; 
mythology  of  what  probably  did  not  happen. 
There  are  myths  in  history  and  history  in  myths. 
Mythology  is  merely  the  old  form  of  history. 

62 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

Every  myth  is  rooted  in  truth.  And  we  have  to 
seek  for  this  truth  in  the  fable,  just  as  we  try  to 
reconstruct  extinct  animals  from  the  remains 
Time  has  preserved  to  us.  Behind  the  story  of 
Prometheus  we  see  the  invention  of  fire ;  behind 
the  loves  of  Ceres  and  Triptolemus  the  invention 
of  the  plow  and  the  beginnings  of  agriculture. 
The  adventures  of  the  Argonauts  show  us  the  first 
attempts  at  voyages  of  exploration  and  the  dis- 
covery of  gold  mines.  Volumes  have  been  writ- 
ten about  the  truths  behind  the  fables,  and  ex- 
planations have  been  found  for  the  strangest  facts 
of  mythology,  even  for  the  metamorphoses  which 
Ovid  described  so  poetically. 

Halfway  between  history  and  mythology  come 
the  sacred  writings.  Each  race  has  its  own. 
Ours  are  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  Many 
believe  that  these  books  are  myths ;  a  larger  num- 
ber— the  Believers — that  they  are  history,  Sa- 
cred History,  the  only  true  history — the  only  one 
about  which  it  is  not  permitted  to  express  a  doubt. 
If  you  want  a  proof  of  this,  recall  that  not  so 
many  years  ago  a  clergyman  in  the  Church  of 
England  was  censured  by  his  ecclesiastical  supe- 

63 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

riors  for  daring  to  say  in  a  sermon  that  the  Ser- 
pent in  the  Garden  of  Eden  was  symbolical  and 
not  a  real  creature. 

And  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  were  right. 
The  basis  of  Christianity  is  the  Redemption — 
the  incarnation  and  sacrifice  of  God  himself  to 
blot  out  the  stain  of  the  first  great  sin  and  also  to 
open  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  to  men.  That  or- 
iginal sin  was  Adam's  fall,  when  he  followed  the 
example  of  Eve,  a  victim  of  the  Serpent's  treach- 
erous counsels,  and  disobeyed  the  command  not 
to  taste  the  Forbidden  Fruit.  Eliminate  the  Gar- 
den of  Eden,  the  Serpent,  the  Forbidden  Fruit, 
and  the  entire  fabric  of  Christianity  crumbles. 

If  we  turn  to  profane  history  and  take  any  his- 
torical work,  we  find  that  the  facts  are  told  in 
such  a  way  that  they  seem  to  us  beyond  dispute. 
But  if  we  see  the  same  facts  from  the  pen  of  an- 
other historian,  we  no  longer  recognize  them. 
The  reason  is  that  a  writer  almost  never  under- 
takes the  task  of  wrestling  with  the  giant,  History, 
unless  he  is  impelled  to  do  so  by  a  preconceived 
idea,  by  a  general  conception,  or  a  system  he 
wants  to  establish.  And  whether  he  wants  to  or 

64 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

not,  he  sees  the  facts  in  a  light  favorable  to  his 
preconceived  idea,  and  observes  them  through 
prisms  which  increase  or  diminish  their  import- 
ance at  his  will.  Then,  however  great  his  dis- 
cernment and  however  strong  his  desire  to  reach 
the  truth,  it  is  doubtful  if  he  ever  will.  In  his- 
tory, as  elsewhere,  absolute  truth  escapes  man- 
kind. Louis  XIV,  Louis  XV,  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon,  Madame  de  Pompadour,  Louis  XVI,  even 
Napoleon  and  Josephine,  so  near  our  own  times, 
are  already  quasi-mythical  characters.  The 
Louis  XIII  of  Marion  de  Lorme  seemed  until 
very  lately  to  be  accurate,  but  recent  discoveries 
show  us  that  he  was  quite  different. 

Napoleon  III  reigned  only  yesterday,  but  his 
picture  is  already  painted  in  different  tints.  My 
entire  youth  was  passed  in  his  reign  and  my  recol- 
lections represent  him  neither  as  the  monster  de- 
picted by  Victor  Hugo  nor  the  kind  sympathetic 
sovereign  of  present-day  stories. 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  discussion  of 
the  causes  which  brought  on  the  War  of  1870. 
We  know  all  that  was  said  and  done  during  the 
last  days  of  that  crisis,  but  will  anyone  ever  know 

65 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

•what  was  hidden  in  the  minds  of  the  sovereigns, 
the  ministers,  and  the  ambassadors?  Will  it 
ever  be  known  whether  the  Emperor  provoked 
Gramont  or  Gramont  the  Emperor?  Did  they 
even  know  themselves?  There  is  one  thing  the 
most  discerning  historian  can  never  reach — the 
depths  of  the  human  soul. 

We  may,  however,  learn  the  secrets  of  the 
tomb.  It  was  asserted  for  a  long  time  that  the 
remains  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  had  been  ex- 
humed, desecrated,  and  thrown  into  the  sewers. 
Victor  Hugo  wrote  a  wonderful  account  of  this 
— an  account  such  as  only  he  could  write.  One 
fine  day  doubt  about  this  occurrence  popped  up 
unexpectedly.  After  waiting  a  long  time  it  was 
decided  to  get  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  and  they 
finally  opened  the  coffins  of  the  two  great  men. 
They  were  peacefully  sleeping  their  last  sleep. 
The  deed  never  took  place;  its  history  was  a 
myth. 

In  this  connection  Victor  Hugo's  credulity  may 
be  mentioned,  for  it  was  astonishing  in  a  man  cf 
such  colossal  genius.  He  believed  in  the  most 
incredible  things,  as  the  "Man  in  the  Iron  Mask," 

66 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

the  twin  brothei  of  Louis  XIV;  in  the  octopus 
that  has  no  mouth  and  feeds  itself  through  its 
arms;  and  in  the  reality  of  the  Japanese  sirens 
which  the  Japanese  were  said  to  make  out  of  an 
ape  and  a  fish.  He  had  some  excuse  for  the  si- 
rens as  the  Academic  des  Sciences  believed  in 
them  for  a  short  time. 

If  what  is  called  history  is  so  near  mythology 
as,  many  times,  to  be  confounded  with  it,  what 
about  romance  and  the  historical  drama  in  which 
events,  entirely  imaginative,  must  of  necessity 
find  a  place?  What  about  the  long-drawn-out 
conversations  in  books  and  on  the  stage  that  are 
attributed  to  historical  persons?  What  about 
the  actions  attributed  to  them,  which  need  not 
be  true  but  only  seem  to  be  so?  The  supernat- 
ural element  is  the  only  thing  lacking  to  make 
such  works  mythological  in  every  way. 

Now  the  supernatural  lends  itself  admirably 
to  expression  in  music  and  music  finds  in  the 
supernatural  a  wealth  of  resources.  But  these 
resources  are  by  no  means  indispensable.  What 
music  must  have  above  all  are  emotions  and  pas- 
sions laid  bare  and  set  in  action  by  what  we  term 

67 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  situation.     And  where  can  one  find  more  or 
better  situations  than  in  history? 

From  the  time  of  Lulli  until  the  end  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  French  opera  was  legendary, 
,that  is  to  say,  it  was  mythological  in  character 
and  was  not,  as  has  been  pretended,  limited  to 
the  depiction  of  emotion  and  the  inner  feelings 
in  order  to  avoid  contingencies.  The  real  mo- 
tive was  to  find  in  fables  material  for  a  spectacle. 
Tragedy,  as  we  know,  does  not  do  this,  for  it  can 
be  developed  only  with  considerable  difficulty 
when  the  stage  is  crowded  with  actors.  On  the 
contrary,  opera,  which  is  free  in  its  movements 
and  can  fill  a  vast  stage,  seeks  for  pomp,  display 
and  haloes  in  which  gods  and  goddesses  appear, 
in  fact  all  that  can  be  put  into  a  stage-setting. 
If  they  did  not  use  local-color,  it  was  because  local 
color  had  not  been  invented.  Finally,  as  we  all 
get  tired  of  everything,  so  they  tired  of  mythol- 
ogy. Then  the  historical  work  was  adopted  and 
appeared  on  the  stage  with  success,  as  is  well 
known.  The  historical  method  had  no  rival  un- 
til Robert  le  Diable  rather  timidly  brought  back 

68 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

the  legendary  element  which  triumphed  later  in 
the  work  of  Richard  Wagner. 

In  the  meantime  Les  Huguenots  succeeded 
Robert  le  Diable  and  for  half  a  century  this  was 
the  bright  particular  star  of  historical  opera. 
Even  now,  although  its  traditions  have  largely 
been  forgotten  and  although  its  workmanship  is. 
rather  inferior  to  that  of  a  later  time,  this  memor- 
able work  nevertheless  shines,  like  the  setting 
sun,  surprisingly  brilliantly.  The  several  gen- 
erations who  admired  this  work  were  not  alto- 
gether wrong.  There  is  no  necessity  to  class* 
this  brilliant  success  as  a  failure,  because  Robert 
Schumann,  who  knew  nothing  about  the  stage, 
denied  its  worth.  It  is  surprising  that  Berlioz's 
judgment  has  not  been  set  against  Schumann's. 
Berlioz  showed  his  enthusiasm  for  Les  Huguenots' 
in  his  famous  treatise  on  instrumentation. 

The  great  public  is  little  interested  in  technical 
polemics  and  is  faithful  to  the  old  successes. 
Although  little  by  little  success  has  come  to  op- 
eras based  on  legends,  there  still  remains  a  taste 
for  operas  with  a  historical  background.  This  is 
not  without  a  reason  for  as  an  authoritative  critic 

69 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

has  said :  "A  historical  drama  may  contain  lyric 
possibilities  far  greater  than  most  of  the  poor, 
weak  mythological  librettos  on  which  composers 
waste  their  strength,  fully  persuaded  that  by  do- 
ing so  they  cause  "the  holy  spirit  of  Bayreuth  to 
descend  upon  them." 

And  they  never  would  have  dreamed  of  being 
mythological,  if  their  god,  instead  of  turning  to 
Scandinavian  mythology,  had  followed  his  orig- 
inal intention  of  dramatizing  the  exploits  of  Fred- 
erick Barbarossa.  In  his  youth  he  was  not  op- 
posed to  historical  opera,  for  he  eulogized  La 
Musette  de  Portici,  La  Juive,  and  La  Reine  de 
Chypre.  He  made  some  justifiable  criticisms  of 
the  libretto  of  the  last  work,  although  he  ad- 
mitted that  the  composer  had  contrived  to  write 
beautiful  passages. 

"We  cannot  praise  Halevy  too  highly,"  he 
wrote,  "for  the  firmness  with  which  he  resists 
every  temptation,  to  which  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries succumb,  to  steal  easy  applause  by  rely- 
ing blindly  on  the  talent  of  the  singers.  On  the 
contrary,  he  demands  that  his  virtuosi,  even  the 
most  famous  of  them,  shall  subordinate  them- 

70 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

selves  to  the  lofty  inspiration  of  his  Muse.  He 
attains  this  result  by  the  simplicity  and  truth  he 
knows  how  to  stamp  on  dramatic  melodies." 

This  is  what  Richard  Wagner  said  about  La 
Juive  in  1842. 

Fortunately  we  no  longer  demand  that  operas 
be  mythological,  for  if  we  did  we  should  have  to 
condemn  the  famous  Russian  operas  and  that  is 
out  of  the  question.  However,  the  method  of 
treatment  is  still  in  dispute  and  this  question  is 
involved.  One  method  of  treatment  is  admitted 
and  another  is  not  and  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
tell  what  is  what. 

I  am  now  going  to  do  a  little  special  pleading 
for  my  Henri  Vlll,  which,  it  would  seem,  is  not  in 
the  proper  manner.  Not  that  I  want  to  defend 
the  music  or  to  protest  against  the  criticisms  it 
has  inspired,  for  that  is  not  done.  But  I  may, 
perhaps,  be  permitted  to  speak  of  the  piece  itself 
and  to  tell  how  the  music  was  adapted  to  it. 

According  to  the  critics  it  would  seem  that  the 
whole  of  Henri  VIII  is  superficial  and  without 
depth,  en  fagade ;  that  the  souls  of  the  characters 
are  not  revealed,  and  that  the  King,  at  first  all 

71 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

sugary  sweetness,  suddenly  becomes  a  monster 
without  any  preparation  for,  or  explanation  of, 
the  change. 

In  this  connection  let  us  consider  Boris  God- 
ounof,  for  there  is  a  historical  drama  suited  to  its 
music.  I  saw  Boris  Godounof  with  considerable 
interest.  I  heard  pleasant  and  impressive  pas- 
sages, and  others  less  so.  In  one  scene  I  saw  an 
insignificant  friar  who  suddenly  becomes  the  Em- 
peror in  the  next  scene.  One  entire  act  is  made 
up  of  processions,  the  ringing  of  bells,  popular 
songs,  and  dazzling  costumes.  In  another  scene 
a  nurse  tells  pretty  stories  to  the  children  in  her 
charge.  Then  there  is  a  love  duet,  which  is 
neither  introduced  nor  has  any  relationship  to  the 
development  of  the  work;  an  incomprehensible 
evening  entertainment,  and,  finally,  funeral 
scenes  in  which  Chaliapine  was  admirable.  It 
was  not  my  fault  if  I  did  not  discover  in  all  that 
the  inner  life,  the  psychology,  the  introductions, 
and  the  explanations  which  they  complain  they 
do  not  find  in  Henri  Vlll. 

"To  Henry  VIII,"  it  is  stated  at  the  beginning 
of  the  work,  "nothing  is  sacred,  neither  friend- 

72 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

ship,  love  nor  his  word — all  are  playthings  of  his 
mad  whims.  He  knows  neither  law  nor  justice." 
And  when,  a  little  later,  smiling,  the  King  hands 
the  holy  water  to  the  ambassador  he  is  receiving, 
the  orchestra  reveals  the  working  of  his  mind  by 
repeating  the  music  of  the  preceding  scene. 
From  beginning  to  end  the  work  is  written  in  this 
way.  But  dissertations  on  such  details  have  not 
been  given  the  public;  the  themes  of  felony,  cru- 
elty, and  duplicity,  and  of  this  and  that,  have  not, 
as  is  the  fashion  of  the  day,  been  underlined,  so 
that  the  critics  are  excusable  for  not  seeing  them. 
Not  a  scene,  not  a  word,  they  say,  shows  the 
soul  of  Henry  VIII.  I  would  like  to  ask  if  it  is 
not  revealed  in  the  great  scene  between  Henry 
and  Catharine,  where  he  plays  with  her  as  a  cat 
with  a  mouse,  where  he  veils  his  desire  to  be  rid  of 
her  under  his  religious  scruples,  and  where  he 
heaps  on  her  constantly  vile  and  cruel  insinua- 
tions, or  even  in  the  last  scene  with  its  cruel  hy- 
pocrisies. It  is  difficult  to  see  why  all  his  pas- 
sions and  all  his  feelings  are  not  brought  into 
play  here.  The  Russian  librettos  do  no  more, 
nor  the  operas  based  on  mythology. 

73 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

But  to  continue.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
opera  mythology  offers  one  advantage  in  the  use 
of  the  miraculous.  But  the  rest  of  the  mythical 
element  offers,  rather,  difficulties.  Characters 
who  never  existed  and  in  whom  no  one  believes 
cannot  be  made  interesting  in  themselves. 
They  do  not  sustain,  as  is  sometimes  supposed, 
the  music  and  poetry.  On  the  contrary,  the 
music  and  poetry  give  them  such  reality  as  they 
possess.  We  could  not  endure  the  interminable 
utterances  of  the  mournful  Wotan,  if  it  were  not 
for  the  wonderful  music  that  accompanies  them. 
Orpheus  weeping  over  Eurydice  would  not  move 
us  greatly,  if  Gluck  had  not  known  how  to  capti- 
vate us  by  his  first  notes.  If  it  were  not  for  Mo- 
zart's music,  the  puppets  of  the  Magic  Flute 
would  amount  to  nothing. 

Musicians  should,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be  al- 
lowed to  choose  both  the  subject  and  motives  for 
their  operas  according  to  their  temperaments  and 
their  feelings.  Much  youthful  talent  is  lost  to- 
day because  the  young  composers  believe  that 
they  must  obey  set  rules  instead  of  obeying  their 
own  inspiration.  All  great  artists,  the  illustri- 

74 


HISTORY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  IN  OPERA 

ous  Richard  more  than  any  other,  mocked  the 
critics. 

As  I  have  spoken  of  Richard  Wagner's  youth, 
I  will  take  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  reveal 
a  secret  of  one  of  his  own  works  which  is  known 
to  me  alone.  When  Wagner  was  young,  I  was  a 
child  and  I  attended  constantly  the  sessions  of 
the  Societe  des  Concerts.  The  kettledrummer 
of  that  day  had  a  peculiar  habit  of  breaking  in 
before  the  rest  of  the  orchestra.  When  the  oth- 
ers began,  it  produced  an  effect  which  the  authors 
had  hardly  foreseen  and  which  was  certain  to  be 
condemned.  But  the  effect  had  a  rather  distinc- 
tive character  and  I  thought  it  might  be  possible 
to  use  it.  Richard  Wagner  lived  in  Paris  at 
the  time  and  frequented  the  famous  concerts. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  he  noted  this  effect  and 
used  it  in  his  overture  to  Faust. 


75 


CHAPTER  VII 

ART    FOR  ART'S   SAKE 

What  is  Art? 

Art  is  a  mystery — something  which  responds 
to  a  special  sense,  peculiar  to  the  human  race. 
This  is  ordinarily  called  the  esthetic  sense,  but 
that  is  an  inexact  term,  for  esthetic  sense  signifies 
a  sense  of  the  beautiful  and  what  is  esthetic  is 
not  necessarily  beautiful.  Sense  of  style  would 
be  better. 

Some  of  the  savage  races  have  this  sense  of 
style,  for  their  arms  and  utensils  show  a  remark- 
able feeling  for  style,  which  they  lose  by  con- 
tact with  civilization. 

By  art  let  us  understand,  if  you  please,  the 
Fine  Arts  alone,  but  including  decorative  art. 
Music  ought  to  be  included. 

I  shall  astonish  most  of  my  readers,  when  I 
say  that  very  few  people  understand  music.  For 

76 


ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE 

most  people  it  is,  as  Victor  Hugo  said,  an  exhala- 
tion of  art — something  for  the  ear  as  perfume  is 
for  the  olfactory  sense,  a  source  of  vague  sensa- 
tions, necessarily  unformed  as  all  sensations  are. 
But  musical  art  is  something  entirely  different. 
It  has  line,  modeling,  color  through  instrumen- 
tation, all  making  up  an  ideal  sphere  where  some, 
like  the  writer  of  these  lines,  live  from  childhood 
on,  which  others  attain  through  education,  while 
many  others  never  know  it  at  all.  Furthermore, 
musical  art  has  more  movement  than  the  other 
fine  arts.  It  is  the  most  mysterious  of  them  all, 
although  the  others  are  mysterious  as  it  is  easy 
to  see. 

The  first  manifestation  of  art  occurs  through 
attempts  to  reproduce  objects.  Such  attempts 
have  been  found  which  date  back  to  prehistoric 
times.  But  what  is  primitive  man's  idea  in  such 
attempts  ?  He  wants  to  record  by  a  line  the  con- 
tour of  the  object,  the  likeness  of  which  he 
wishes  to  preserve.  This  contour  and  this 
line  do  not  exist  in  nature.  The  whole  phil- 
osophy of  art  is  in  that  crude  drawing.  It 
bases  itself  on  nature  even  while  making  some- 

77 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

thing  quite  different  in  response  to  a  special,  in- 
explicable need  of  the  human  spirit.  Accord- 
ingly nothing  can  be  more  chimerical  or  vain  than 
the  advice  so  often  given  to  the  artist  to  be  truth- 
ful. Art  can  never  be  true,  even  though  it 
should  not  be  false.  It  should  be  true  artisti- 
cally, by  giving  an  artistic  translation  which  will 
satisfy  the  sense  of  style  of  which  we  have  spoken. 
When  Art  has  satisfied  this  sense  of  style,  the  ob- 
ject of  artistic  expression  has  been  attained ;  noth- 
ing more  can  be  asked.  But  it  is  not  the  "vain 
effort  of  an  unproductive  cleverness,"  as  our  M. 
de  Mun  has  said;  it  is  an  effort  to  satisfy  a  legiti- 
mate need,  one  of  the  loftiest  and  most  honorable 
in  human  nature — the  need  of  art. 

If  this  is  so,  why  should  we  demand  that  Art 
be  useful  or  moral?  It  is  both  in  its  own  way, 
for  it  awakens  noble  and  honest  sentiments  in  the 
soul.  That  was  the  opinion  of  Theophile  Gau- 
tier,  but  Victor  Hugo  disagreed.  The  sun  is 
beautiful,  he  used  to  say,  and  it  is  useful.  That 
is  true,  but  the  sun  is  not  an  object  of  art.  Be- 
sides, how  many  times  Victor  Hugo  denied  his 
own  doctrine  by  writing  verses  which  were  merely 

78 


ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE 

brilliant  descriptions  or  admirable  bits  of  imagi- 
nation ? 

We  are,  however,  talking  of  art  and  not  of  lit- 
erature. Literature  becomes  art  in  poetry  but 
forsakes  it  in  prose.  Even  if  some  of  the  great 
prose  writers  rendered  their  prose  artistic 
through  the  beauty  and  harmony  of  their  periods 
and  the  picturesqueness  of  their  expressions,  still 
prose  is  not  art  in  its  real  nature.  So,  crude  in- 
decency aside,  what  would  be  immoral  in  prose 
ceases  to  be  immoral  in  verse,  for  in  poetry  Art 
follows  its  own  code  and  form  transcends  the  sub- 
ject matter.  That  is  why  a  great  poet,  Sully- 
Prudhomme,  preferred  prose  to  verse  when  he 
wanted  to  write  philosophically,  for  he  feared,  on 
account  of  the  superiority  of  form  to  substance 
in  poetry,  that  his  ideas  would  not  be  taken  seri- 
ously. That  explains  as  well  why  parents  take 
young  girls  to  hear  an  opera,  when  if  the  same 
piece  was  played  without  music  they  would  be 
appalled  at  the  idea.  What  Christian  is  ever 
shocked  by  La  Juive  or  Catholic  frightened  away 
from  Les  Huguenots? 

Because  prose  is  far  removed  from  art,  it  is  un- 
79 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

suited  to  music,  despite  the  fact  that  this  ill-as- 
sorted union  is  fashionable  to-day?  In  poetry 
there  has  been  an  effort  to  make  it  so  artistic  that 
form  alone  is  considered  and  verse  is  written 
which  is  entirely  without  sense.  But  that  is  a 
fad  which  can't  last  long. 

Sometime  ago  M.  de  Mun  said: 

"Not  to  take  sides  is  what  the  author  is  in- 
hibited from  doing.  Art,  to  my  way  of  thinking, 
is  a  setting  forth  of  ideas.  If  it  is  not  that — if  it 
limits  itself  solely  to  considerations  of  form,  to 
a  worship  of  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  without  re- 
gard to  the  deeds  and  thoughts  it  brings  to  light, 
then  it  seems  to  me  no  better  than  the  vain  effort 
of  an  unproductive  cleverness." 

The  eminent  speaker  is  absolutely  right  as  far 
as  prose  is  concerned,  but  we  cannot  agree  with 
him  if  poetry  is  considered. 

Victor  Hugo,  in  his  marvellous  ode,  La  Lyre  et 
La  Harpe,  brings  Paganism  and  Christianity  face 
to  face.  Each  speaks  in  turn,  and  the  poet  in  his 
last  stanza  seems  to  acknowledge  that  both  are 
right,  but  that  does  not  prevent  the  ode  from  be- 

80 


M.  Saint-Saens  in  his  Later  Years 


ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE 

ing  a  masterpiece.  That  would  not  be  possible 
in  prose,  but  in  the  poem  the  poetry  carries  all 
before  it. 

Why  is  it  that  geniuses  like  Victor  Hugo,  dis- 
tinguished minds,  thinkers,  and  profound  critics, 
refuse  to  see  that  Art  is  a  special  entity  which  re- 
sponds to  a  certain  sense  ?  If  Art  accommodates 
itself  marvellously,  if  it  accords  itself  with  the 
precepts  of  morality  and  passion,  it  is  neverthe- 
less sufficient  unto  itself — and  in  its  self-suffi- 
ciency lies  its  heights  of  greatness. 

The  first  prelude  of  Sebastian  Bach's  Wohl- 
temperirte  Klavier  expresses  nothing,  and  yet 
that  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  music.  The  Venus 
de  Milo  expresses  nothing,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
marvels  of  sculpture. 

To  tell  the  truth,  it  is  proper  to  add  that  in 
order  not  to  be  immoral  Art  must  appeal  to  those 
who  have  a  feeling  for  it.  Where  the  artist  sees 
only  beautiful  forms,  the  gross  see  only  nudity. 
I  have  seen  a  good  man  scandalized  at  the  sight  of 
Ingres's  La  Source. 

Just  as  morality  has  no  function  to  be  artistic, 
81 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

so  Art  has  nothing  to  do  with  morality.  Both 
have  their  own  functions,  and  each  is  useful  in 
its  own  way.  The  final  aim  of  morality  is  moral- 
ity; of  art,  art,  and  nothing  else. 


82 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POPULAR   SCIENCE   AND   ART 

Rene  Bazin  has  sketched  cleverly  Pasteur's 
brilliant  career.  France  has  no  clearer  claim  to 
glory  than  in  Pasteur,  for  he  is  one  of  the  men, 
who,  in  spite  of  everything,  keeps  her  in  the  first 
rank  of  nations. 

A  rare  good  fortune  attended  him.  While 
many  scholars  who  seek  the  truth  without  con- 
cerning themselves  with  the  practical  results  have 
to  wait  many  long  years  before  their  discoveries 
can  be  used,  Pasteur's  discoveries  were  useful  at 
once.  So  the  mob,  which  cannot  understand  sci- 
ence studied  for  its  own  sake,  appreciated  Pas- 
teur's works.  He  saved  millions  to  the  public 
treasury,  and  tens  of  thousands  of  human  lives. 

He  had  already  secured  a  notable  place  in  sci- 
ence when  the  public  learned  his  name  through 
the  memorable  contest  between  him  and  Pouchet 
over  "spontaneous  generation."  The  probabili- 

83 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ties  of  the  case  were  on  Pouchet's  side.  People 
refused  to  believe  that  these  organisms  which  de- 
veloped in  great  numbers  in  an  enclosed  jar  or 
that  the  molds  which  developed  under  certain 
conditions  were  not  produced  spontaneously. 
The  youth  of  the  time  went  wild  over  the  ques- 
tion. 

I  was  constantly  being  asked,  "Are  you  for 
Pouchet  or  Pasteur?"  and  my  invariable  re- 
sponse was,  "I  shall  be  for  the  one  who  proves  he 
is  right."  I  was  unwilling  to  admit  that  any 
such  question  could  be  solved  a  priori  in  accord- 
ance with  preconceived  ideas,  although  I  must 
confess  that  among  my  friends  I  found  no  one  of 
the  same  opinion. 

We  know  how  Pasteur  won  a  striking  victory 
through  his  patience  and  his  genius.  He  dem- 
onstrated that  millions  and  millions  of  germs  are 
present  in  the  air  about  us  and  that  when  one  of 
them  finds  favorable  conditions,  a  living  being 
appears  which  engenders  others.  "Many  are 
called,  but  few  are  chosen."  This  law  may  seem 
unjust,  but  it  is  one  of  the  great  laws  of  Nature. 

Pasteur,  the  great  benefactor,  whose  discov- 
84 


POPULAR  SCIENCE  AND  ART 

cries  did  so  much  for  all  classes  of  society,  should 
have  been  popular,  but  he  was,  on  the  contrary, 
extremely  unpopular.  The  leading  publicists  of 
the  day  were  influenced  by  some  inexplicable  sen- 
timent and  they  made  constant  war  on  him. 
When,  after  several  years  of  prodigious  labor, 
Pasteur  ventured  to  assert  himself,  they  took  ad- 
vantage of  his  following  the  dictates  of  humanity 
in  accepting  all  sorts  of  cases,  curable  or  not,  to 
spread  a  report  that  his  treatment  did  not  cure, 
but  instead  gave  the  disease  which  it  was  sup- 
posed to  cure.  Popular  fury  was  aroused  to 
such  a  height,  that  a  monster  mass  meeting  was 
held  against  Pasteur.  Louise  Michel  addressed 
this  meeting  with  her  customary  vigor  of  speech 
and  amidst  frantic  applause  shouted  this  un- 
qualified remark,  "Scientific  questions  should  be 
settled  by  the  people." 

By  this  time  everybody  was  talking  about  mi- 
crobes, and  a  shop  on  the  boulevards  announced 
an  exhibition  of  them.  They  used  what  is 
known  as  a  solar  microscope  and  threw  on  a 
screen,  suitably  enlarged,  the  animalculae  which 
grow  in  impure  water,  the  larvae  of  mosquitoes, 

85 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

and  other  insects,  which  bear  about  the  same  rela- 
tion to  microbes  that  an  elephant  does  to  a  flea. 
I  went  into  this  establishment,  and  saw  the  plain 
people  with  their  wives  looking  at  the  exhibition 
very  seriously  and  really  believing  that  they  saw 
the  famous  microbes.  One  of  them  near  me 
said,  with  a  knowing  air,  "What  won't  science  do 
next?" 

I  was  indignant,  and  I  had  all  I  could  do  to 
keep  from  saying:  "They  are  fooling  you. 
What  they  are  showing  you  is  not  Science,  at  the 
most  only  its  antechamber.  As  for  you  who  are 
deceiving  these  naive  good  people,  you  are  only 
impostors." 

But  I  kept  still;  I  would  only  have  succeeded 
in  getting  thrown  out.  But  I  said  to  myself — 
and  I  still  say — "Why  not  enlighten  these  peo- 
ple, who  obviously  want  light?"  It  is  impos- 
sible to  teach  them  science,  but  it  should  be  pos- 
sible to  make  them  at  least  comprehend  what  sci- 
ence is,  for  they  have  no  idea  of  it  now.  They 
do  not  know — in  this  era  when  they  are  con- 
stantly talking  about  their  rights  and  urged  to  de- 
mand more  wages  and  less  work — that  there  are 

86 


POPULAR  SCIENCE  AND  ART 

young  people  who  are  spending  their  best  years 
and  leading  a  precarious  existence,  working  day 
and  night,  without  hope  of  personal  profit,  with 
no  other  end  in  view  besides  the  hope  of  discover- 
ing new  facts  from  which  humanity  may  benefit  at 
some  time  in  the  future.  They  do  not  know  that 
all  the  benefits  of  civilization  which  they  care- 
lessly enjoy  are  the  result  of  the  long,  painful 
and  enormous  work  of  the  thinkers  whom  they  re- 
gard as  idlers  and  visionaries  who  grow  rich  from 
the  sweat  of  the  toilers.  In  a  word,  they  should 
be  taught  to  give  respect  to  what  is  worthy  of  it. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  scientific  congresses, 
but  these  are  serious  gatherings  which  attract 
only  the  select  few.  It  should  be  possible  to  in- 
terest everybody,  and  in  order  to  make  scientific 
meetings  interesting  we  should  use  motion  pic- 
tures and  concerts. 

But  here  we  trench  on  art.  We  ought  to  teach 
the  people  not  only  science  but  art  as  well,  but 
the  latter  is  the  more  difficult. 

Modern  peoples  are  not  artistic.  The  Greeks 
were,  and  the  Japanese  were,  before  the  Euro- 

87 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

pean  invasion.  An  artistic  people  is  recognized 
by  their  ignorance  of  "objects  of  art,"  for  in  such 
an  environment  art  is  everywhere.  An  artistic 
people  no  more  dreams  of  creating  art  than  a 
great  nobleman  of  consciously  exhibiting  a  dis- 
tinguished manner.  Distinction  lies  in  his 
slightest  mannerism  without  his  being  conscious 
of  the  fact.  So,  among  artistic  peoples,  the  most 
ordinary  and  humble  objects  have  style.  And 
this  style,  furthermore,  is  in  perfect  harmony 
with  the  purpose  of  the  object.  It  is  absolutely 
appropriate  for  that  purpose  in  its  proportions, 
in  the  purity  of  its  lines,  the  elegance  of  its  form, 
its  perfection  of  execution,  and,  above  all,  in  its 
meaning.  When  an  outcry  is  raised  against  the 
ugliness  and  tawdriness  of  certain  objects  in  this 
country,  the  answer  is,  "But  see  how  cheap  they 
are!"  But  style  and  conscience  in  work  cost 
nothing.  Feeling  for  art  is,  however,  inherent 
in  human  nature.  The  weapons  of  primitive 
peoples  are  beautiful.  The  prehistoric  hatchets 
of  the  Stone  Age  are  perfect  in  their  contours. 
There  is,  therefore,  no  question  of  creating  a  feel- 
ing for  art  in  the  people,  but  of  awakening  it. 

88 


POPULAR  SCIENCE  AND  ART 

Music  holds  so  important  a  place  in  the  mod- 
ern world,  that  we  ought  to  begin  with  that. 
There  is  plenty  of  gay  music,  easy  to  understand, 
which  is  in  harmony  with  the  laws  of  art,  and  the 
people  ought  to  hear  it  instead  of  the  horrors 
which  they  cram  into  our  ears  under  the  pretence 
of  satisfying  our  tastes.  What  pleases  people 
most  is  sentimental  music,  but  it  need  not  be  a 
silly  sentimentality.  Instead,  they  ought  to  give 
the  people  the  charming  airs  which  grow,  as  natu- 
rally as  daisies  on  a  lawn,  in  the  vast  field  of 
opera-comique.  That  is  not  high  art,  it  is  true, 
but  it  is  pretty  music  and  it  is  high  art  compared 
with  what  is  heard  too  often  in  the  cafes.  I  am 
not  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  such  establishments 
employ  talented  people.  But  along  with  the 
good,  what  frightful  things  one  hears !  And  no 
one  would  listen  to  their  instrumental  repertoire 
anywhere  else! 

Every  time  anyone  has  tried  to  raise  the  stand- 
ards and  employ  real  singers  and  real  virtuosi, 
the  attendance  has  increased.  But,  very  often, 
even  at  the  theatres,  the  managers  satisfy  their 
own  tastes  under  the  pretence  of  satisfying  that 

89 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

of  the  public.  That  is,  of  course,  intensely  hu- 
man. We  judge  others  by  ourselves. 

A  famous  manager  once  said  to  me,  as  he 
pointed  to  an  empty  house,  "The  public  is  amaz- 
ing. Give  them  what  they  like,  and  they  don't 
come!" 

One  day  I  was  walking  in  a  garden.  There 
was  a  bandstand  and  musicians  were  playing 
some  sort  of  music.  The  crowd  was  indifferent 
and  passed  by  talking  without  paying  the  slight- 
est attention.  Suddenly  there  sounded  the  first 
notes  of  the  delightful  andante  of  Beethoven's 
Symphony  in  D — a  flower  of  spring  with  a  deli- 
cate perfume.  At  the  first  notes  all  walking  and 
talking  stopped.  And  the  crowd  stood  motion- 
less and  in  an  almost  religious  silence  as  it  lis- 
tened to  the  marvel.  When  the  piece  was  over,  I 
went  out  of  the  garden,  and  near  the  entrance  I 
heard  one  of  the  managers  say, 

"There,  you  see  they  don't  like  that  kind  of 


music." 


And  that  kind  of  music  was  never  played  there 
again. 


90 


CHAPTER  DC 

ANARCHY   IN   MUSIC 

Music  is  as  old  as  human  nature.  We  can  get 
some  idea  of  what  it  was  at  first  from  the  music  of 
savage  tribes.  There  were  a  few  notes  and  rudi- 
mentary melodies  with  blows  struck  in  cadence  as 
an  accompaniment;  or,  sometimes,  the  same 
primitive  rhythms  without  any  accompaniment 
— and  nothing  else!  Then  melody  was  per- 
fected and  the  rhythms  became  more  compli- 
cated. Later  came  Greek  music,  of  which  we 
know  little,  and  the  music  of  the  East  and  Far 
East. 

Music,  as  we  now  understand  the  term,  began 
with  the  attempts  at  harmony  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
These  attempts  were  labored  and  difficult,  and  the 
uncertainty  of  their  gropings,  combined  with  the 
slowness  of  their  development,  excites  our  won- 
der. Centuries  were  necessary  before  the  writ- 

91 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ing  of  music  became  exact,  but,  slowly,  laws  were 
elaborated.  Thanks  to  them  the  works  of  the 
Sixteenth  Century  came  into  being,  in  all  their 
admirable  purity  and  learned  polyphony.  Hard 
and  inflexible  laws  engendered  an  art  analogous 
to  primitive  painting.  Melody  was  almost  en- 
tirely absent  and  was  relegated  to  dance  tunes 
and  popular  songs.  But  the  dance  tunes  of  the 
time,  on  which,  perhaps,  erudition  was  not  used 
sufficiently,  were  written  in  the  same  polyphonic 
style  and  with  the  same  rigid  correctness  as  the 
madrigals  and  the  church  music. 

We  know  that  the  popular  songs  found  their 
way  into  the  church  music  and  that  Palestrina's 
great  reform  consisted  in  banishing  them.  How- 
ever, we  should  get  but  a  feeble  idea  of  the  part 
they  played,  if  we  imagined  that  they  naturally 
belonged  there.  Take  a  well  known  air,  An 
Claire  de  la  Lune,  for  example,  and  make  each 
note  a  whole  note  sung  by  the  tenor,  while  the 
other  voices  dialogue  back  and  forth  in  counter- 
point, and  see  what  is  left  of  the  song  for  the  lis- 
tener. The  scandal  of  La  Messe  de  VHomme 
arme  was  entirely  theoretical. 

92 


ANARCHY  IN  MUSIC 

We  simply  do  not  know  how  they  played  these 
anthems,  masses,  and  madrigals,  in  the  absence 
of  any  indication  of  either  the  time  or  the  em- 
phasis. We  find  a  few  directions  for  expression, 
as  in  the  first  measures  of  Palestrina's  Stabat 
Mater,  but  such  directions  are  extremely  rare. 
They  are  simply  the  first  signs  of  the  dawn  of  the 
far-off  day  of  music  with  expression.  Certain 
learned  and  well-intentioned  persons  endeavor  to 
compare  this  music  with  ours,  and  we  surprise  in 
some  of  the  modern  editions  instances  of  molto 
expressive  which  seem  to  be  good  guesses.  This 
exclusively  consonant  music,  in  which  the  inter- 
vals of  fourths  were  considered  dissonant,  while 
the  diminishing  fifth  was  the  diabolus  in  musica, 
ought  from  its  very  nature  to  be  antithetical  to  ex- 
pression. Nothing  in  the  Kyrie,  in  La  Messe  du 
Pape  Marcel,  gives  the  impression  of  a  prayer, 
unless  expressive  accents,  without  any  real  justi- 
fication, are  introduced  by  main  strength. 

Expression  came  into  existence  with  the  chord 
of  the  dominant  seventh  from  which  all  modern 
harmony  developed.  This  invention  is  attrib- 
uted to  Monteverde.  No  matter  what  has  been 

93 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

said,  however,  it  occurs  in  Palestrina's  Adoremus. 
Floods  of  ink  have  been  poured  out  in  discussing 
this  question,  some  affirming,  while  others — and 
not  the  least,  by  any  manner  of  means — denying 
the  existence  of  the  famous  chord.  No  equivo- 
cation is  possible.  It  is  a  simultaneously  played 
chord  held  by  four  voices  for  a  whole  measure. 
What  is  certain  is  that  Palestrina,  by  putting 
aside  the  rules,  made  a  discovery,  the  significance 
of  which  he  did  not  realize. 

With  the  introduction  of  the  seventh  interval 
a  new  era  began.  It  would  be  a  grave  error  to 
believe  that  the  rules  were  overturned,  for,  in- 
stead, new  principles  were  added  to  old  ones  as 
new  conditions  demanded.  They  learned  how  to 
modulate,  how  to  transpose  from  one  key  to  the 
next  key  and  finally  to  the  keys  farthest  away. 
In  his  treatise  on  harmony  Fetis  studied  this  evo- 
lution in  a  masterly  manner.  Unfortunately  his 
scholarship  was  not  combined  with  deep  musical 
feeling.  For  example,  he  saw  faults  in  Mozart 
and  Beethoven  where  there  are  only  beauties,  and 
beauties  which  even  an  ignorant  listener — if  he  is 
naturally  musical — will  see  without  trouble. 

94 


He  did  not  understand  the  vast  difference  be- 
tween the  unlettered  person  who  commits  a  sole- 
cism and  Pascal,  the  inventor  of  a  new  syntax. 

However  that  may  be,  Fetis  gave  us  a  compre- 
hensive review  in  broad  outlines  of  musical  evolu- 
tion down  to  what  he  justly  called  the  "omnitonic 
system,"  which  Richard  Wagner  has  achieved 
since.  "Beyond  that,"  he  said,  "I  can  see  noth- 
ing more." 

He  did  not  foresee  the  a-tonic  system,  but  that 
is  what  we  have  come  to.  There  is  no  longer 
any  question  of  adding  to  the  old  rules  new  prin- 
ciples which  are  the  natural  expression  of  time 
and  experience,  but  simply  of  casting  aside  all 
rules  and  every  restraint. 

"Everyone  ought  to  make  his  own  rules. 
Music  is  free  and  unlimited  in  its  liberty  of  ex- 
pression. There  are  no  perfect  chords,  disso- 
nant chords  or  false  chords.  All  aggregations  of 
notes  are  legitimate." 

That  is  called,  and  they  believe  it,  the  develop- 
ment of  taste. 

He  whose  taste  is  developed  by  this  system  is 
not  like  the  man  who  by  tasting  a  wine  can  tell 

95 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

you  its  age  and  its  vineyard,  but  he  is  rather  like 
the  fellow  who  with  perfect  indifference  gulps 
down  good  or  bad  wine,  brandy  or  whiskey,  and 
prefers  that  which  burns  his  gullet  the  most. 
The  man  who  gets  his  work  hung  in  the  Salon  is 
not  the  one  who  puts  on  his  canvas  delicate 
touches  in  harmonious  tones,  but  he  who  juxta- 
poses vermillion  and  Veronese  green.  The  man 
with  a  "developed  taste"  is  not  the  one  who 
knows  how  to  get  new  and  unexpected  results  by 
passing  from  one  key  to  another,  as  the  great 
Richard  did  in  Die  Meister singer,  but  rather  the 
man  who  abandons  all  keys  and  piles  up  disso- 
nances which  he  neither  introduces  nor  concludes 
and  who,  as  a  result,  grunts  his  way  through 
music  as  a  pig  through  a  flower  garden. 

Possibly  they  may  go  farther  still.  There 
seems  to  be  no  reason  why  they  should  linger  on 
the  way  to  untrammeled  freedom  or  restrict  them- 
selves within  a  scale.  The  boundless  empire  of 
sound  is  at  their  disposal  and  let  them  profit  by  it. 
That  is  what  dogs  do  when  they  bay  at  the  moon, 
cats  when  they  meow,  and  the  birds  when  they 
sing.  A  German  has  written  a  book  to  prove 

96 


ANARCHY  IN  MUSIC 

that  the  birds  sing  false.  Of  course  he  is  wrong 
for  they  do  not  sing  false.  If  they  did,  their 
song  would  not  sound  agreeable  to  us.  They 
sing  outside  of  scales  and  it  is  delightful,  but  that 
is  not  man-made  art. 

Some  Spanish  singers  give  a  similar  impres- 
sion, through  singing  interminable  grace  notes 
beyond  notation.  Their  art  is  intermediate  be- 
tween the  singing  of  the  birds  and  of  man.  It  is 
not  a  higher  art. 

In  certain  quarters  they  marvel  at  the  progress 
made  in  the  last  thirty  years.  The  architects  of 
the  Fifteenth  Century  must  have  reasoned  in  the 
same  way.  They  did  not  appreciate  that  they 
were  assassinating  Gothic  art,  and  that  after  some 
centuries  we  would  have  to  revert  to  the  art  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans. 


97 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    ORGAN 

When  hairy  Pan  joined  reeds  of  different 
lengths  and  so  invented  the  flute  which  bears  his 
name,  he  was,  in  reality,  creating  the  organ.  It 
needed  only  to  add  to  this  flute  a  keyboard  and 
bellows  to  make  one  of  those  pretty  instruments 
the  first  painters  used  to  put  in  the  hands  of  an- 
gels. As  it  developed  and  gradually  became  the 
most  grandiose  of  the  instruments,  the  organ, 
with  its  depth  of  tone  modified  and  increased  ten- 
fold by  the  resonance  of  the  great  cathedrals, 
took  on  its  religious  character. 

The  organ  is  more  than  a  single  instrument. 
It  is  an  orchestra,  a  collection  of  the  pipes  of  Pan 
of  every  size,  from  those  as  small  as  a  child's  play- 
things to  those  as  gigantic  as  the  columns  of  a 
temple.  Each  one  corresponds  to  what  is 
termed  an  organ-stop.  The  number  is  unlim- 
ited. 

98 


THE  ORGAN 

The  Romans  made  organs  which  must  have 
been  simple  from  the  musical  standpoint,  though 
they  were  complicated  in  their  mechanical  con- 
struction. They  were  called  hydraulic  organs. 
The  employment  of  water  in  a  wind  instrument 
has  greatly  perplexed  the  commentators.  Ca- 
vaille-Coll  studied  the  question  and  solved  the 
problem  by  demonstrating  that  the  water  com- 
pressed the  air.  This  system  was  ingenious  but 
imperfect,  since  it  was  applicable  only  to  the  most 
primitive  instruments.  The  keys,  it  seems, 
were  very  large,  and  were  struck  by  blows  of  the 
fist. 

Let  us  leave  erudition  for  art  and  primitive  for 
perfected  instruments.  By  the  time  of  Sebastian 
Bach  and  Rameau  the  organ  had  taken  on  its 
grandiose  character.  The  stops  had  multiplied 
and  the  organist  called  them  by  means  of  regis- 
ters which  he  drew  out  or  pushed  back  at  will. 
In  order  to  give  greater  resources,  the  builder 
multiplied  the  keyboards.  Pedals  were  intro- 
duced to  help  out  the  keyboards.  At  that  time 
Germany  alone  had  pedals  worthy  of  the  name 
and  worth  while  in  playing  an  interesting  bass 

99 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

part.  In  France  and  elsewhere  the  rudimentary 
pedals  were  only  used  for  certain  fundamental 
notes  or  in  prolonged  tenutos.  No  one  outside 
of  Germany  could  play  Sebastian  Bach's  compo- 
sitions. 

Playing  on  the  old  instruments  was  fatiguing 
and  uncomfortable.  The  touch  was  heavy  and, 
when  one  used  both  the  pedals  and  the  keyboards, 
a  real  display  of  strength  was  necessary.  A  sim- 
ilar display  was  necessary  to  draw  out  or  push 
back  the  registers,  some  of  which  were  beyond 
the  player's  reach.  In  short,  an  assistant  was 
necessary,  in  fact  several  assistants  in  playing 
large  organs  like  those  at  Harlem  or  Arnheim  in 
Holland.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  modify 
the  combinations  of  stops.  All  nuances,  save 
the  abrupt  change  from  strong  to  soft  and  vice 
versa,  were  impossible. 

It  remained  for  Cavaille-Coll  to  change  all 
this  and  open  up  new  fields  of  usefulness  for  the 
organ.  He  introduced  in  France  keyboards 
worthy  of  the  name,  and  he  gave  to  the  higher 
notes,  through  his  invention  of  harmonic  stops, 
a  brilliancy  they  had  lacked.  He  invented  won- 

100 


THE  ORGAN 

derful  combinations  which  allow  the  organist  to 
change  his  combinations  and  to  vary  the  tone, 
without  the  aid  of  an  assistant  and  without  leav- 
ing the  keyboard.  Even  before  his  day  a  scheme 
had  been  devised  of  enclosing  certain  stops  in  a 
box  protected  by  shutters  which  a  pedal  opened 
and  closed  at  will;  this  permitted  the  finest  shad- 
ings.  By  different  processes  the  touch  of  the  or- 
gan was  made  as  delicate  as  that  of  the  piano. 

For  some  years  the  Swiss  organ-makers  have 
been  inventing  new  facilities  which  make  the  or- 
ganist a  sort  of  magician.  The  manifold  re- 
sources of  the  marvellous  instrument  are  at  his 
command,  obedient  to  his  slightest  wish. 

These  resources  are  prodigious.  The  com- 
pass of  the  organ  far  surpasses  that  of  all  the  in- 
struments of  the  orchestra.  The  violin  notes 
alone  reach  the  same  height,  but  with  little  car- 
rying power.  As  for  the  lower  tones,  there  is  no 
competitor  of  the  thirty-two-foot  pipes,  which  go 
two  octaves  below  the  violoncello's  low  C.  Be- 
tween the  pianissimo  which  almost  reaches  the 
limit  where  sound  ceases  and  silence  begins, 
down  to  a  range  of  formidable  and  terrifying 

101 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

power,  every  degree  of  intensity  can  be  obtained 
from  this  magical  instrument.  The  variety  of  its 
timbre  is  broad  There  are  flute  stops  of  vari- 
ous kinds ;  tonal  stops  that  approximate  the  tim- 
bre of  stringed  instruments;  stops  for  effecting 
changes  in  which  each  note,  formed  from  several 
pipes,  bring  out  simultaneously  its  fundamental 
and  harmonic  sounds;  stops  which  serve  to  imi- 
tate the  instruments  of  the  orchestra,  such  as  the 
trumpet,  the  clarinet,  and  the  cremona  (an  obso- 
lete instrument  with  a  timbre  peculiar  to  itself) 
and  the  bassoon.  There  are  celestial  voices  of 
several  kinds,  produced  by  combinations  of  two 
simultaneous  stops  which  are  not  tuned  in  per- 
fect unison.  Then  we  have  the  famous  Vox  Hu- 
mana, a  favorite  with  the  public,  which  is  allur- 
ing even  though  it  is  tremulous  and  nasal,  and 
we  have  the  innumerable  combinations  of  all 
these  different  stops,  with  the  gradations  that  may 
be  obtained  through  indefinite  commingling  of 
the  tones  of  this  marvellous  palette. 

Add  to  all  this  the  continual  breathing  of  the 
monster's  lungs  which  gives  the  sounds  an  incom- 
parable and  inimitable  steadiness.  Human  be- 

102 


THE  ORGAN 

ings  were  used  for  a  long  time  to  fill  these  lungs 
— blowers  working  away  with  hands  and  feet. 
We  do  much  better  now.  The  great  organ  in 
Albert  Hall,  London,  is  supplied  with  air  by 
steam  which  assures  the  organist  an  inexhaust- 
ible supply.  Other  instruments  use  gas  engines 
which  are  more  manageable.  Then,  there  is  the 
hydraulic  system,  which  is  very  powerful  and 
easily  used,  for  one  has  only  to  pull  out  a  plug  to 
set  the  bellows  in  motion. 

These  mechanical  systems,  however,  are  not 
entirely  free  from  accidents.  I  discovered  that 
fact  when  I  was  concluding  the  first  part  of  the 
Adagio  in  Liszt's  great  Fantaisie  in  the  beautiful 
Victoria  Hall  in  Geneva.  The  pipe  which 
brought  in  the  water  burst  and  the  organ  was 
mute.  I  have  always  thought,  perhaps  wrongly, 
that  malice  had  something  to  do  with  the  acci- 
dent. 

This  Liszt  Fantaisie  is  the  most  extraordinary 
piece  for  the  organ  there  is.  It  lasts  forty  min- 
utes and  the  interest  is  sustained  throughout. 
Just  as  Mozart  in  his  Fantaisie  et  Sonate  in  C 
minor  foresaw  the  modern  piano,  so  Liszt,  writ- 

103 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES  , 

ing  this  Fantaisie  more  than  half  a  century  ago, 
appears  to  have  foreseen  the  instrument  of  a 
thousand  resources  which  we  have  to-day. 

Let  us  have  the  courage  to  admit,  however, 
that  these  resources  are  only  partly  utilized  as 
they  can  or  should  be.  To  draw  from  a  great 
instrument  all  its  possibilities,  to  begin  with, 
one  must  understand  it  thoroughly,  and  that  un- 
derstanding cannot  be  gained  over  night.  The 
organ,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  collection  of  an  in- 
definite number  of  instruments.  It  places  be- 
fore the  organist  extraordinary  means  of  express- 
ing himself.  No  two  of  these  instruments  are 
precisely  alike.  The  organ  is  only  a  theme  with 
innumerable  variations,  determined  by  the  place 
in  which  it  is  to  be  installed,  by  the  amount  of 
money  at  the  builder's  disposal,  by  his  inventive- 
ness, and,  often,  by  his  personal  whims.  As  a 
result  time  is  required  for  the  organist  to  learn  his 
instrument  thoroughly.  After  this  he  is  as  free 
as  the  fish  in  the  sea,  and  his  only  preoccupation 
is  the  music.  Then,  to  play  freely  with  the  col- 
ors on  his  vast  palette,  there  is  but  one  way — he 
must  plunge  boldly  into  improvisation. 

104 


THE  ORGAN 

Now  improvisation  is  the  particular  glory  of 
the  French  school,  but  it  has  been  injured  seri- 
ously of  late  by  the  influence  of  the  German 
school.  Under  the  pretext  that  an  improvisation 
is  not  so  good  as  one  of  Sebastian  Bach's  or  Men- 
delssohn's masterpieces,  young  organists  have 
stopped  improvising. 

That  point  of  view  is  harmful  because  it  is  ab- 
solutely false;  it  is  simply  the  negation  of  elo- 
quence. Consider  what  the  legislative  hall,  the 
lecture  room  and  the  court  would  be  like  if  noth- 
ing but  set  pieces  were  delivered.  We  are  famil- 
iar with  the  fact  that  many  an  orator  and  lawyer, 
who  is  brilliant  when  he  talks,  becomes  dry  as 
dust  when  he  tries  to  write.  The  same  thing 
happens  in  music.  Lefebure-Wely  was  a  won- 
derful improviser  (I  can  say  this  emphatically, 
for  I  heard  him)  but  he  left  only  a  few  unimpor- 
tant compositions  for  the  organ.  I  might  also 
name  some  of  my  contemporaries  who  express 
themselves  completely  only  through  their  impro- 
visations. The  organ  is  thought-provoking. 
As  one  touches  the  organ,  the  imagination  is 
awakened,  and  the  unforeseen  rises  from  the 

105 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

depths  of  the  unconscious.  It  is  a  world  of  its 
own,  ever  new,  which  will  never  be  seen  again, 
and  which  comes  out  of  the  darkness,  as  an  en- 
chanted island  comes  from  the  sea. 

Instead  of  this  fairyland,  we  too  often  see  only 
some  of  Sebastian  Bach's  or  Mendelssohn's  pieces 
repeated  continuously.  The  pieces  themselves 
are  very  fine,  but  they  belong  to  concerts  and  are 
entirely  out  of  place  in  church  services.  Fur- 
thermore, they  were  written  for  old  instruments 
and  they  apply  either  not  at  all,  or  badly,  to  the 
modern  organ.  Yet  there  are  those  who  think 
this  belief  spells  progress. 

I  am  fully  aware  of  what  may  be  said  against 
improvisation.  There  are  players  who  impro- 
vise badly  and  their  playing  is  uninteresting. 
But  many  preachers  speak  badly.  That,  how- 
ever, has  nothing  to  do  with  the  real  issue.  A 
mediocre  improvisation  is  always  endurable,  if 
the  organist  has  grasped  the  idea  that  church 
music  should  harmonize  with  the  service  and  aid 
meditation  and  prayer.  If  the  organ  music  is 
played  in  this  spirit  and  results  in  harmonious 
sounds  rather  than  in  precise  music  which  is  not 

106 


d 

03 
H 


_rt 

CX 


CO 


03 
CO 


THE  ORGAN 

worth  writing  out,  it  still  is  comparable  with  the 
old  glass  windows  in  which  the  individual  figures 
can  hardly  be  distinguished  but  which  are,  never- 
theless, more  charming  than  the  finest  modern 
windows.  Such  an  improvisation  may  be  better 
than  a  fugue  by  a  great  master,  on  the  principle 
that  nothing  in  art  is  good  unless  it  is  in  its  proper 
place. 

During  the  twenty  years  I  played  the  organ 
at  the  Madeleine,  I  improvised  constantly,  giv- 
ing my  fancy  the  widest  range.  That  was  one 
of  the  joys  of  life. 

But  there  was  a  tradition  that  I  was  a  severe, 
austere  musician.  The  public  was  led  to  believe 
that  I  played  nothing  but  fugues.  So  current 
was  this  belief  that  a  young  woman  about  to  be 
married  begged  me  to  play  no  fugues  at  her  wed- 
ding! 

Another  young  woman  asked  me  to  play  fu- 
neral marches.  She  wanted  to  cry  at  her  wed- 
ding, and  as  she  had  no  natural  inclination  to  do 
so,  she  counted  on  the  organ  to  bring  tears  to  her 
eyes. 

But  this  case  was  unique.  Ordinarily,  they 
107 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

were  afraid  of  my  severity — although  this  sever- 
ity was  tempered. 

One  day  one  of  the  parish  vicars  undertook  to 
instruct  me  on  this  point.  He  told  me  that  the 
Madeleine  audiences  were  composed  in  the  main 
of  wealthy  people  who  attended  the  Opera-Com- 
ique  frequently,  and  formed  musical  tastes  which 
ought  to  be  respected. 

"Monsieur  1'abbe,"  I  replied,  "when  I  hear 
from  the  pulpit  the  language  of  opera-comique,  I 
will  play  music  appropriate  to  it,  and  not  be- 
fore!" 


108 


CHAPTER  XI 

JOSEPH   HAYDN   AND   THE    "SEVEN   WORDS" 

Joseph  Haydn,  that  great  musician,  the  father 
of  the  symphony  and  of  all  modern  music,  has 
been  neglected.  We  are  too  prone  to  forget  that 
concerts  are,  in  a  sense,  museums  in  which  the 
older  schools  of  music  should  be  represented. 
Music  is  something  besides  a  source  of  sensuous 
pleasure  and  keen  emotion,  and  this  resource, 
precious  as  it  is,  is  only  a  chance  corner  in  the 
wide  realm  of  musical  art.  He  who  does  not  get 
absolute  pleasure  from  a  simple  series  of  well- 
constructed  chords,  beautiful  only  in  their  ar- 
rangement, is  not  really  fond  of  music.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  one  who  does  not  prefer  the 
first  prelude  of  the  W 'ohltemperirte  Klavier, 
played  without  gradations,  just  as  the  author 
wrote  it  for  the  harpsichord,  to  the  same  prelude 
embellished  with  an  impassioned  melody ;  or  who 
does  not  prefer  a  popular  melody  of  character  or 

109 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

a  Gregorian  chant  without  any  accompaniment 
to  a  series  of  dissonant  and  pretentious  chords. 

The  directors  of  great  concerts  should  love 
music  themselves  and  should  lead  the  public  to 
appreciate  it.  They  should  not  allow  the  mas- 
ters to  be  forgotten,  for  their  only  fault  was  that 
they  were  not  born  in  our  times  and  they  never 
dreamed  of  attempting  to  satisfy  the  tastes  of  an 
unborn  generation.  Above  all,  the  directors 
should  grant  recognition  to  masters  like  Joseph 
Haydn  who  were  in  advance  of  their  own  times 
and  who  seem  now  and  then  to  belong  to  our  own. 

The  only  examples  of  Joseph  Haydn's  im- 
mense work  that  the  present  generation  knows 
are  two  or  three  symphonies,  rarely  and  perfunc- 
torily performed.  This  is  the  same  as  saying 
that  we  do  not  know  him  at  all.  No  musician 
was  ever  more  prolific  or  showed  a  greater  wealth 
of  imagination.  When  we  examine  this  mine  of 
jewels,  we  are  astonished  to  find  at  every  step  a 
gem  which  we  would  have  attributed  to  the  in- 
vention of  some  modern  or  other.  We  are  daz- 
zled by  their  rays,  and  where  we  expect  black- 
and-whites  we  find  pastels  grown  dim  with  time. 

110 


JOSEPH  HAYDN 

Of  Haydn's  one  hundred  and  eighteen  sym- 
phonies, many  are  simple  trifles  written  from  day 
to  day  for  Prince  Esterhazy's  little  chapel,  when 
the  master  was  musical  director  there.  But  after 
Haydn  was  called  to  London  by  Salomon,  a  di- 
rector of  concerts,  where  he  had  a  large  orchestra 
at  his  disposal,  his  genius  took  magnificent 
flights.  Then  he  wrote  great  symphonies  and  in 
them  the  clarinets  for  the  first  time  unfolded  the 
resources  from  which  the  modern  orchestra  has 
profited  so  abundantly.  Originally  the  clarinet 
played  a  humble  role,  as  the  name  indicates. 
Clarinetto  is  the  diminutive  of  clarino,  and  the 
instrument  was  invented  to  replace  the  shrill 
tones  that  the  trumpet  lost  as  it  gained  in  depth 
of  tone. 

Old  editions  of  Haydn's  symphonies  show  a 
picturesque  arrangement,  in  that  the  disposition 
of  the  orchestra  is  shown  on  the  printed  page. 
Above,  is  a  group  made  up  of  drums  and  the 
brass.  In  the  center  is  a  second  group — the 
flutes,  oboes  and  bassoons,  while  the  strii  ed  in- 
struments are  at  the  bottom  of  the  page.  When 
clarinets  are  used,  they  are  a  part  of  the  first 

111 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

group.  This  pretty  arrangement  has,  unfortu- 
nately, not  been  followed  in  the  modern  editions 
of  these  symphonies.  In  the  works  written  in 
London  the  clarinet  has  utterly  forgotten  its  or- 
igins. It  has  left  the  somewhat  plebeian  world 
of  the  brasses  and  has  gained  admittance  to  the 
more  refined  society  of  the  woods.  Haydn,  in 
his  first  attempts,  took  advantage  of  the  beautiful 
heavy  tones,  "chalumeau,"  and  the  flexibility  and 
marvellous  range  of  a  beautiful  instrument. 

During  his  stay  in  London  Haydn  sketched  an 
Orfeo  which  he  never  completed,  as  the  theatre 
which  ordered  it  failed  before  it  was  finished. 
Only  fragments  of  the  work  remain,  and,  fortu- 
nately enough,  these  have  been  engraved  in  an 
orchestra  score.  These  fragments  are  uneven  in 
value.  The  dialogue,  or  recitative,  which 
should  bind  them  together  was  lost  and  so  we  are 
unable  to  judge  them  fairly.  Among  the  frag- 
ments is  a  brilliant  aria  on  Eurydice  which  is 
rather  ridiculous,  while  another  on  Eurydice  dy- 
ing is  charming.  We  also  find  music  for  myste- 
rious English  horns;  it  is  written  as  for  clarinets 
in  B  flat  and  reaches  heights  which  are  impossible 

112 


JOSEPH  HAYDN 

for  the  instrument  we  now  know  as  the  English 
horn.  There  is  also  a  beautiful  bass  part.  This 
has  been  provided  with  Latin  words  and  is  sung 
in  churches.  This  aria  was  assigned  to  a  Creon 
who  does  not  appear  in  the  other  fragments. 
One  scene  shows  Eurydice  running  up  and  down 
the  banks  pursued  by  demons.  Another  depicts 
the  death  of  Orpheus,  killed  by  the  Bacchantes. 
This  score  is  a  curiosity  and  nothing  more,  and  a 
reading  causes  no  regret  that  the  work  was  not 
completed. 

Like  Gluck,  Joseph  Haydn  had  the  rare  ad- 
vantage of  developing  constantly.  He  did  not 
reach  the  height  of  his  genius  until  an  age  when 
the  finest  faculties  are,  ordinarily,  in  a  decline. 
He  astounded  the  musical  world  with  his  Crea- 
tion, in  which  he  displayed  a  fertility  of  imagina- 
tion and  a  magnificence  of  orchestral  richness 
that  the  oratorio  had  never  known  before.  Em- 
boldened by  his  success  he  wrote  the  Seasons,  a 
colossal  work,  the  most  varied  and  the  most  pic- 
turesque in  the  history  of  ancient  or  modern 
music.  In  this  instance  the  oratorio  is  no  longer 
entirely  religious.  It  gives  an  audacious  pic- 

113 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ture  of  nature  with  realistic  touches  which  are 
astonishing  even  now.  There  is  an  artistic  imi- 
tation of  the  different  sounds  in  nature,  as  the 
rustling  of  the  leaves,  the  songs  of  the  birds  in  the 
woods  and  on  the  farm,  and  the  shrill  notes  of  the 
insects.  Above  all  that  is  the  translation  into 
music  of  the  profound  emotions  to  which  the  dif- 
ferent aspects  of  nature  give  birth,  as  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  forests,  the  stifling  heat  before  a 
storm,  the  storm  itself,  and  the  wonderful  sunset 
that  follows.  Then  there  is  a  huntsman's  chorus 
which  strikes  an  entirely  different  note.  There 
are  grape  harvests,  with  the  mad  dances  that  fol- 
low them.  There  is  the  winter,  with  a  poignant 
introduction  which  reminds  us  of  pages  in  Schu- 
mann. But  be  reassured,  the  author  does  not 
leave  us  to  the  rigors  of  the  cold.  He  takes  us 
into  a  farmhouse  where  the  women  are  spinning 
and  where  the  peasants  are  drawn  about  the  fire, 
listening  to  a  funny  tale  and  laughing  immode- 
rately with  a  gaiety  which  has  never  been  sur- 
passed. 

But  this  gigantic  work  does  not  end  without 
giving  us  a  glimpse  of  Heaven,  for  with  one  grand 

114 


JOSEPH  HAYDN 

upward  burst  of  flight,  Haydn  reaches  the  realms 
where  Handel  and  Beethoven  preceded  him.  He 
equals  them  and  ends  his  picture  in  a  dazzling 
blaze  of  light. 

This  is  the  sort  of  work  of  which  the  public  re- 
mains in  ignorance  and  which  it  ought  to  know. 

But  all  this  is  not  what  I  started  out  to  say.  I 
wanted  to  write  about  a  delicate,  touching,  re- 
served and  precious  work  by  the  same  author — 
The  Seven  Words  of  Christ  on  the  Cross.  This 
work  has  appeared  in  three  forms — for  an  orches- 
tra and  chorus,  for  an  orchestra  alone,  and  for  a 
quartet.  When  I  was  a  young  man,  they  used  to 
say  in  Paris  that  this  work  was  originally  written 
for  a  quartet,  then  developed  for  an  orchestra, 
and,  finally,  the  voices  were  added. 

Chance  took  me  to  Cadiz,  once  upon  a  time, 
and  there  I  was  given  the  true  story  of  this  beau- 
tiful piece  of  work.  To  my  astonishment  I 
learned  that  it  had  been  first  performed  in  the 
city  of  Cadiz.  They  even  spoke  of  a  competi- 
tion in  which  Haydn  won  the  prize,  but  there  was 
never  any  such  contest.  The  work  was  ordered 
from  the  author,  but  the  question  is  who  ordered 

115 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

it.  Two  religious  circles,  the  Cathedral  and  the 
Cueva  del  Rosario,  both  lay  claim  to  the  initia- 
tive. I  have  gone  over  all  the  evidence  in  this 
dispute  which  is  of  little  interest  to  us,  for  the 
only  interest  is  the  origin  of  the  composition. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  Seven 
Words  was  written  in  the  first  place  for  an  orches- 
tra in  1785,  and  its  destination,  as  we  shall  see, 
was  settled  by  the  author  himself. 

In  his  Memoires  pour  la  Biographic  et  la  Bibli- 
ographic de  Uile  de  Cadix,  Don  Francisco  de 
Miton,  Marquis  de  Meritos,  relates  that  he  corres- 
ponded with  Haydn  and  ordered  this  composition 
which  was  to  be  performed  at  the  Cathedral  in 
Cadiz.  According  to  his  account  Haydn  said 
that  "the  composition  was  due  more  to  what 
Sefior  Milton  wrote  than  to  his  own  invention,  for 
it  showed  every  motif  so  marvellously  that  on 
reading  the  instructions  he  seemed  to  read  the 
music  itself." 

If  the  Marquis  was  not  boasting,  we  must  con- 
fess that  the  ingenuous  Haydn  was  not  so  ingen- 
uous as  has  been  thought,  and  that  he  knew  how 
to  flatter  his  patrons. 

116 


JOSEPH  HAYDN 

In  1801  Breitkopf  and  Haertel  published  the 
work  with  the  addition  of  the  vocal  parts  at  Leip- 
zig. This  edition  had  a  preface  by  the  author 
in  which  he  said: 

About  fifteen  years  ago,  a  cure  at  Cadiz  en- 
gaged me  to  write  some  passages  of  instrumental 
music  on  the  Seven  Words  of  Christ  on  the  Cross. 
It  was  the  custom  at  that  time  to  play  an  oratorio 
at  the  Cathedral  during  Holy  Week,  and  they 
took  great  pains  to  give  as  much  solemnity  as  pos- 
sible. The  walls,  the  windows  and  the  pillars  of 
the  church  were  hung  in  black,  and  only  a  single 
light  in  the  centre  shone  in  the  sanctuary.  The 
doors  were  closed  at  mid-day  and  the  orchestra 
began  to  play.  After  the  opening  ceremonies 
the  bishop  entered  the  pulpit,  pronounced  one  of 
the  "Seven  Words"  and  delivered  a  few  words 
inspired  by  it.  Then  he  descended,  knelt  before 
the  altar,  and  remained  there  for  some  time. 
This  pause  was  relieved  by  the  music.  The 
bishop  ascended  and  descended  six  times  more 
and  each  time,  after  his  homily,  music  was 
played.  My  music  was  to  be  adapted  to  these 
ceremonies. 

The  problem  of  writing  seven  adagios  to  be 
performed  consecutively,  each  one  to  last  ten 

117 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

minutes,  without  wearying  the  audience,  was  not 
an  easy  one  to  solve,  and  I  soon  recognized  the 
impossibility  of  making  my  music  conform  to  the 
prescribed  limits. 

The  work  was  written  and  printed  without 
words.  Later  the  opportunity  of  adding  them 
was  offered,  so  the  oratorio  which  Breitkopf  and 
Haertel  publish  to-day  is  a  complete  work  and, 
so  far  as  the  vocal  part  is  concerned,  entirely  new. 

The  kind  reception  which  it  has  received 
among  amateurs  makes  me  hope  that  the  entire 
public  will  welcome  it  with  the  same  kindness. 

Haydn  feared  to  weary  his  hearers.  Our 
modern  bards  have  no  such  vain  scruple. 

Michel  Haydn,  Joseph's  brother  and  the 
author  of  some  highly  esteemed  religious  compo- 
sitions, has  been  generally  credited  with  the  addi- 
tion of  the  vocal  parts  to  the  Seven  Words.  Jo- 
seph Haydn  did  not  say  that  this  was  the  case,  but 
it  would  seem  that  if  he  did  the  work  himself  he 
would  have  said  so  in  his  preface. 

This  vocal  part,  however,  adds  nothing  to  the 
value  of  the  work.  And  it  is  of  no  great  conse- 
quence who  the  author  of  the  arrangement  for  the 
quartet  was.  At  the  time  there  were  many  ama- 

118 


JOSEPH  HAYDN 

teurs  who  played  on  stringed  instruments. 
They  used  to  meet  frequently  and  everything  in 
music  was  arranged  for  quartets  just  as  now 
everything  is  arranged  for  piano  duets.  Some 
of  Beethoven's  sonatas  were  arranged  in  this 
form.  The  piano  killed  the  quartet,  and  it  is  a 
great  pity,  for  the  quartet  is  the  purest  form  of 
instrumental  music.  It  is  the  first  form — the 
fountain  of  Hippocrene.  Now  instrumental  mu- 
sic drinks  from  every  cup  and  the  result  is  that 
many  times  it  seems  drunk. 

To  return  to  the  Seven  Words.  Their  sym- 
phonic form  is  the  only  one  worth  considering. 
They  are  eloquent  enough  without  the  aid  of 
voices,  for  their  charm  penetrates.  Unlike  the 
Creation  and  the  Seasons  they  do  not  demand  ex- 
traordinary means  of  execution,  and  nothing  is 
easier  than  to  give  them. 

The  opera  houses  are  closed  on  Good  Fri- 
day, and  it  used  to  be  the  custom  to  give  evening 
concerts,  vaguely  termed  "Sacred  Concerts,"  be- 
cause their  programmes  were  made  up  wholly  or 
in  part  of  religious  music.  This  good  custom 
has  disappeared  and  with  it  the  opportunity  to 

119 


give  the  public  such  delightful  works  as  the 
Seven  Words,  and  so  many  other  things  which 
harmonize  with  the  character  of  the  day. 

At  one  of  these  Sacred  Concerts,  Pasdeloup 
presented  on  the  same  evening  the  Credo  from 
Liszt's  Missa  Solemnis  and  the  one  from  Cheru- 
bini's  Messe  du  Sacre.  Liszt's  Credo  was  re- 
ceived with  a  storm  of  hisses,  while  Cherubim's 
was  praised  to  the  skies.  I  could  not  help  think- 
ing— I  was  somewhat  unjust,  for  Cherubini's 
work  has  merit — of  the  people  of  Jerusalem  who 
acclaimed  Barrabas  and  demanded  the  crucifix- 
ion of  Jesus. 

To-day  Liszt's  Credo  is  received  with  wild  ap- 
plause— Victor  Hugo  did  his  part — -while  Cheru- 
bini's is  never  revived. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  AT  HEIDELBERG  (1912) 

The  Liszt  centenary  was  celebrated  every- 
where with  elaborate  festivities,  perhaps  most 
notably  at  Budapest  where  the  Missa  Solemnis 
was  sung  in  the  great  cathedral — that  alone 
would  have  been  sufficient  glory  for  the  com- 
poser. At  Weimar,  which,  during  his  lifetime, 
Liszt  made  a  sort  of  musical  Mecca,  they  gave  a 
performance  of  his  deeply  charming  oratorio  Die 
Legende  von  der  Heiligen  Elisabeth.  The  fes- 
tival at  Heidelberg  was  of  special  interest  as  it 
was  organized  by  the  General  Association  of  Ger- 
man Musicians  which  Liszt  had  founded  fifty 
years  before.  Each  year  this  society  gives  in  a 
different  city  a  festival  which  lasts  several  days. 
It  admits  foreign  members  and  I  was  once  a  mem- 
ber as  Berlioz's  successor  on  Liszt's  own  invita- 
tion. Disagreements  separated  us,  and  I  had 

121 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

had  no  relation  with  the  society  for  a  number  of 
years  when  they  asked  me  to  take  part  in  this  fes- 
tival. A  refusal  would  have  been  misunder- 
stood and  I  had  to  accept,  although  the  idea  of 
performing  at  my  age  alongside  such  virtuosi  as 
Risler,  Busoni,  and  Friedheim,  in  the  height  of 
their  talent,  was  not  encouraging. 

The  festival  lasted  four  days  and  there  were 
six  concerts — four  with  the  orchestra  and  a 
chorus.  They  gave  the  oratorio  Christus,  an 
enormous  work  which  takes  up  all  the  time  al- 
lowed for  one  concert ;  the  Dante  and  Faust  sym- 
phonies, and  the  symphonic  poems  Ce  quon  en- 
tend  sur  la  montagne  and  Tasso,  to  mention  only 
the  most  important  works. 

The  oratorio  Christus  lacks  the  fine  unity  of 
the  Saint  Elisabeth.  But  the  two  works  are  alike 
in  being  divided  into  a  series  of  separate  episodes. 
While  the  different  episodes  in  Saint  Elisabeth 
solve  the  difficult  problem  of  creating  variety  and 
retaining  unity,  the  parts  of  Christus  are  some- 
what unrelated.  There  is  something  for  every 
taste.  Certain  parts  are  unqualifiedly  admir- 
able; others  border  on  the  theatrical;  still  others 

122 


THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  (1912) 

are  nearly  or  entirely  liturgical,  while,  finally, 
some  are  picturesque,  although  there  are  some 
almost  confusing.  Like  Gounod,  Liszt  was 
sometimes  deceived  and  attributed  to  ordinary 
and  simple  sequences  of  chords  a  profound  sig- 
nificance which  escaped  the  great  majority  of  his 
hearers.  There  are  some  pages  of  this  sort  in 
Chris  tus. 

But  there  are  beautiful  and  wonderful  things 
in  this  vast  work.  If  we  regret  that  the  author 
lingered  too  long  in  his  imitation  of  the  Pifferari 
of  the  Roman  campagna,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
are  delighted  by  the  symphonic  interlude  Les 
Bergers  a  la  Creche.  It  is  very  simple,  but  in  an 
inimitable  simplicity  of  taste  which  is  the  secret 
of  great  artists  alone.  It  is  surprising  that  this 
interlude  does  not  appear  in  the  repertoire  of  all 
concerts. 

The  Dante  symphony  has  not  established  itself 
in  the  repertoires  as  has  the  Faust  symphony.  It 
was  performed  for  the  first  time -in  Paris  at  a  con- 
cert I  organized  and  managed  at  a  time  when 
Liszt's  works  were  distrusted.  Along  with  the 
Dante  symphony  we  had  the  Andante  (Gretchen) 

123 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

from  the  Faust  symphony,  the  symphonic  poem 
Fest  Kloenge,  a  charming  work  which  is  never 
played  now,  and  still  other  works.  It  would  be 
hard  to  imagine  all  the  opposition  I  had  to  over- 
come in  giving  that  concert.  There  was  the  hos- 
tility of  the  public,  the  ill-will  of  the  Theatre- 
Italien  which  rented  me  its  famous  hall  but  which 
sullenly  opposed  a  proper  announcement  of  the 
concert,  the  insubordination  of  the  orchestra,  the 
demands  of  the  singers  for  more  pay — they  imag- 
ined that  Liszt  would  pay  the  expenses — and, 
finally,  complete — and  expected  failure.  My 
only  object  was  to  lay  a  foundation  for  the  future, 
nothing  more.  In  spite  of  everything  I  man- 
aged to  get  a  creditable  performance  of  the  Dante 
symphony  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  it 
for  the  first  time. 

The  first  part  (the  Inferno)  is  wonderfully  im- 
pressive with  its  Francesco,  da  Rimini  interlude, 
in  which  burn  all  the  fires  of  Italian  passion. 
The  second  part  (Purgatory  and  Paradise)  com- 
bines the  most  intense  and  poignant  charm.  It 
contains  a  fugue  episode  of  unsurpassed  beauty. 

Ce  qiion  entend  sur  la  montagne  is,  perhaps, 
124 


THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  (1912) 

the  best  of  the  famous  symphonic  poems.  The 
author  was  inspired  by  Victor  Hugo's  poetry  and 
reproduced  its  spirit  admirably.  When  will  this 
typical  work  appear  in  the  concert  repertoires? 
When  will  orchestra  conductors  get  tired  of  pre- 
senting the  three  or  four  Wagnerian  works  they 
repeat  ad  nauseum,  when  they  can  be  heard  at 
the  Opera  under  better  conditions,  and  Schu- 
bert's insignificant  Unfinished  Symphony. 

The  Christus  oratorio  was  given  at  the  first 
concert  of  the  festival  at  Heidelberg.  It  lasted 
three  hours  and  a  half  and  is  so  long  that 
I  would  not  dare  to  advise  concert  managers  to 
try  such  an  adventure.  The  performance  was 
sublime.  It  was  given  in  a  newly  constructed 
square  hall.  Cavaille-Coll,  who  knew  acoustics, 
used  to  advise  the  square  hall  for  concerts  but  no- 
body would  listen  to  him.  Three  hundred 
chorus  singers,  many  from  a  distance,  were  sup- 
ported by  an  orchestra  that  was  large,  but,  in  my 
opinion,  insufficient  to  stand  up  against  this  mass 
of  voices.  Furthermore,  the  orchestra  was 
placed  below  the  level  of  the  stage,  as  in  a  theatre, 

125 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

while  the  voices  sounded  freely  above.  Two 
harps,  one  on  the  east  side  of  the  stage  and  one 
on  the  west,  saw  each  other  from  afar, — a  pleas- 
ingly decorative  device,  but  as  annoying  to  the 
ear  as  pleasing  to  the  eye.  The  chorus  and  the 
four  soloists — their  task  was  exceedingly  ardu- 
ous— triumphed  completely  over  the  difficulties 
of  this  immense  work  and  all  the  varied  and  deli- 
cate nuances  were  rendered  to  perfection. 

Liszt  was  far  from  professing  the  disdain  for 
the  limitations  of  the  human  voice  that  Wagner 
and  Berlioz  did.  On  the  contrary  he  treated  it  as 
if  it  were  a  queen  or  a  goddess,  and  it  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  his  tastes  did  not  lead  him  to  work 
for  the  stage.  Parts  of  Saint  Elisabeth  show  that 
he  would  have  succeeded  and  the  fashion  of  hav- 
ing operas  for  the  orchestra,  accompanied  by 
voices,  which  we  enjoy  to-day,  might  have  been 
avoided.  He  discovered  a  method,  peculiarly 
his  own,  of  writing  choruses.  His  manner  has 
never  been  imitated,  but  it  is  ingenious  and  has 
many  advantages.  The  only  trouble  about  it  is 
that  the  singers  have  to  take  care  of  details  and 

126 


THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  (1912) 

shadings  which  is  too  often  the  least  of  their  wor- 
ries. The  German  societies,  where  the  members 
sing  for  pleasure,  and  not  for  a  salary,  are  careful 
to  excess,  if  there  can  be  excess  in  such  matters, 
and  it  is  their  great  good  fortune  to  be  the  inter- 
preters of  choruses  written  in  this  manner. 

It  is  impossible  to  give  an  analysis  of  this  vast 
work  here.  We  have  already  spoken  of  the 
charming  interlude,  Les  Bergers  a  la  Creche. 
This  pastoral  is  followed  by  La  Marche  des  Rois 
Mages,  a  pretty  piece,  but  a  little  overdeveloped 
for  its  intrinsic  worth.  The  vocal  parts,  Les  Beat' 
itudes  and  Le  Pater  Noster,  would  be  more  suit- 
able in  a  church  than  in  a  concert  hall.  Then 
come  some  most  brilliant  pages,  La  Tempete  sur 
le  lac  de  Thiberiade,  and  Le  Mont  des  Oliviers, 
with  its  baritone  solo,  and  finally,  the  Stabat 
Mater,  where  great  beauties  are  combined  with 
terrible  length.  But  nothing  in  the  whole  work 
impressed  me  more  than  Christ's  entrance  to 
Jerusalem  (orchestra,  chorus,  and  soloist)  for 
the  reading  alone  gives  no  idea  of  it.  Here  the 
author  reached  the  heights.  That  also  describes 

127 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  delightful  effect  of  the  children's  chorus  sing- 
ing in  the  distance  0  Filii  et  Filiae,  harmonised 
with  perfect  taste. 

While  I  listened  to  this  beautiful  work,  I  could 
not  help  thinking  of  the  great  oratorios  which 
crowned  Gounod's  musical  career  so  gloriously. 
Liszt  and  Gounod  differed  entirely  in  their  musi- 
cal temperaments,  yet  in  their  oratorios  they  met 
on  common  ground.  In  both  there  was  the  same 
drawing  away  from  the  old  forms  of  oratorio,  the 
same  search  for  realism  in  the  expression  of  the 
text  in  music,  the  same  respect  for  Latin  prosody, 
and  the  same  belief  in  simplicity  of  style.  But 
while  there  is  renunciation  in  the  simplicity  of 
Liszt,  who  threw  aside  worldly  finery  to  wear  the 
frock  of  a  penitent,  on  the  contrary  Gounod  ap- 
pears to  return  to  his  original  bent  with  an  almost 
holy  joy.  This  is  easily  explained.  Liszt  fin- 
ished his  life  in  a  cassock,  while  Gounod  began 
his  in  one.  So,  despite  Liszt's  superior  refine- 
ment, and  putting  aside  exceptional  achieve- 
ments, in  this  branch  of  art  Gounod  was  the  vic- 
tor. As  there  is  an  odor  di  femina  there  is  a  par- 
fum  d'eglise,  well  known  to  Catholics.  Goun- 

128 


THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  (1912) 

od's  oratorios  are  impregnated  with  this,  while 
it  is  found  in  Christus  very,  very  feebly,  if  at  all. 
The  Missa  Solemnis  must  be  examined  to  find  it 
to  any  extent  in  Liszt's  work. 

All  the  necessary  elements  were  combined  at 
Heidelberg  to  produce  a  magnificent  production 
of  Faust  and  Dante.  The  orchestra  of  more  than 
one  hundred  musicians  was  perfect.  The  period 
when  the  wind  instruments  in  Germany  were 
wanting  both  in  correctness  and  quality  of  sound 
has  passed.  But  the  orchestra  conductors  have 
to  be  taken  into  account.  In  our  day  these  gen- 
tlemen are  virtuosi.  Their  personalities  are  not 
subservient  to  the  music,  but  the  music  to  them. 
It  is  the  springboard  on  which  they  perform  and 
parade  their  all  embracing  personalities.  They 
add  their  own  inventions  to  the  author's  meaning. 
Sometimes  they  draw  out  the  wind  instruments  so 
that  the  musicians  have  to  cut  a  phrase  at  the  end 
to  catch  their  breath ;  again  they  affect  a  mad  and 
unrestrained  rapidity  which  allows  time  neither 
to  play  nor  to  hear  the  sounds.  They  hurry  or 
retard  the  movement  for  no  reason  besides  their 
individual  caprice  or  because  the  author  did  not 

129 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

indicate  them.  They  perpetrate  music  of  such 
a  disorganized  character  that  the  musicians  are 
utterly  bewildered,  and  hesitate  in  their  entrances 
on  account  of  their  inability  to  distinguish  one 
measure  from  another. 

The  delightful  Purgatoire  has  become  a  deadly 
bore,  and  the  enchanting  Mephistopheles  has 
been  riddled  as  by  a  hailstorm.  Familiarity  with 
such  excesses  made  me  particularly  appreciative 
of  the  excellent  performance  that  Wolfrum,  the 
musical  director,  obtained  in  the  vast  Christus 
concert. 

Among  the  conductors  was  Richard  Strauss 
who  cannot  be  passed  over  without  a  word.  Cer- 
tainly no  one  will  hope  to  find  moderation  and 
serenity  in  this  artist  or  be  surprised  if  he  gives 
his  temperament  free  rein,  and  rides  on  to  vic- 
tory undisturbed  by  the  ruins  he  leaves  behind. 
But  he  lacks  neither  intelligence  nor  elegance, 
and  if  he  sometimes  goes  too  fast  he  never  over- 
emphasizes slowness.  When  he  is  conducting, 
we  need  not  fear  the  desert  of  Sahara  where  oth- 
ers sometimes  lead  us.  Under  his  direction 
Tasso  displayed  all  its  wealth  of  resources  and  the 

130 


THE  LISZT  CENTENARY  (1912) 

jewel-like  Mephisto-Walzer  shone  more  brightly 
than  ever  before. 

I  can  speak  but  briefly  of  the  numerous  solo- 
ists. We  neither  judge  nor  compare  such  talents 
as  those  of  Busoni,  Friedheim,  and  Risler.  We 
are  satisfied  with  admiring  them.  However,  if  a 
prize  must  be  awarded,  I  should  give  it  to  Risler 
for  his  masterly  interpretation  of  the  great  Sonata 
in  B  minor.  He  made  the  most  of  it  in  every 
way,  in  all  its  power  and  in  all  its  delicacy. 
When  it  is  given  in  this  way,  it  is  one  of  the  finest 
sonatas  imaginable.  But  such  a  performance  is 
rare,  for  it  is  beyond  the  average  artist.  The 
strength  of  an  athlete,  the  lightness  of  a  bird,  ca- 
priciousness,  charm,  and  a  perfect  understanding 
of  style  in  general  and  of  the  style  of  this  com- 
poser in  particular  are  the  qualifications  needed 
to  perform  this  work.  It  is  far  too  difficult  for 
most  virtuosi,  however  talented  they  may  be. 

Among  the  women  singers  I  shall  only  men- 
tion Madame  Cahier  from  the  Viennese  Opera. 
She  is  a  great  artist  with  a  wonderful  voice  and 
her  interpretation  of  several  lieder  made  them 
wonderfully  worth  while.  Madame  Cahier  in- 

131 


terpreted  the  part  of  Dalila  at  Vienna  with  Dai- 
mores,  so  it  can  easily  be  appreciated  how  much 
pleasure  I  took  in  hearing  her. 

A  final  word  about  the  Dante  Symphony.  I 
have  read  somewhere  that  Liszt  used  pages  to 
produce  an  effect  which  Berlioz  accomplished  in 
the  apparition  of  Mephistopheles  in  Faust  with 
three  notes.  This  comparison  is  unjust.  Ber- 
lioz's happy  discovery  is  a  work  of  genius  and  he 
alone  could  have  invented  it.  But  the  sudden 
appearance  of  the  Devil  is  one  thing  and  the  de- 
piction of  Hell  quite  another.  Berlioz  tried  such 
a  depiction  at  the  end  of  the  Damnation,  and  in 
spite  of  the  strange  vocabulary  of  the  chorus, 
"Irimiru  Karabrao,  Sat  raik  Irkimour,"  and  other 
pretty  tricks,  he  succeeded  no  better  than  Liszt. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  opposite  was  the  case. 


132 


CHAPTER  XIII 
BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

The  reading  of  the  score  of  Berlioz's  Requiem 
makes  it  appear  singularly  old-fashioned,  but  this 
is  true  of  most  of  the  romantic  dramas,  which, 
like  the  Requiem,  show  up  better  in  actual 
performance.  It  is  easy  to  rail  at  the  vehemence 
of  the  Romanticists,  but  it  is  not  so  easy  to  equal 
the  effect  of  Hernani,  Lucrece  Borgia  and  the 
Symphonic  fantastique  on  the  public.  For  with 
all  their  faults  these  works  had  a  marvellous  suc- 
cess. The  truth  is  that  their  vehemence  was 
sincere  and  not  artificial.  The  Romanticists  had 
faith  in  their  works  and  there  is  nothing  like 
faith  to  produce  lasting  results. 

Reicha  and  Leuseur  were,  as  we  know,  Ber- 
lioz's instructors.  Leuseur  was  the  author  of 
numerous  works  and  wrote  a  good  deal  of  church 
music.  Some  of  his  religious  works  were  really 

133 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

beautiful,  but  he  had  strange  obsessions.  Ber- 
lioz greatly  admired  his  master  and  could  not 
help  showing,  especially  in  his  earlier  works', 
traces  of  this  admiration.  That  is  the  reason 
for  the  syncopated  and  jerky  passages  without 
rhyme  or  reason  and  which  can  only  be  explained 
by  his  unconscious  imitation  of  Leuseur's  faults. 
In  imitating  a  model  the  resemblances  occur  in 
the  faults  and  not  in  the  excellences,  for  the  lat- 
ter are  inimitable.  So  the  excellences  of  the 
Requiem  are  not  due  to  Leuseur  but  to  Berlioz. 
He  had  already  thrown  off  the  trammels  of  school 
and  shown  all  the  richness  of  his  vigorous  orig- 
inality to  which  the  value  of  his  scores  is  due. 

In  his  Memoirs  Berlioz  related  the  tribulations 
of  his  Requiem.  It  was  ordered  by  the  govern- 
ment, laid  aside  for  a  time,  and,  finally,  per- 
formed at  the  Invalides  on  the  occasion  of  the  cap- 
ture of  Constantine  (in  Algeria)  and  the  funeral 
services  of  General  Damremont.  He  was  aston- 
ished at  the  lack  of  sympathy  and  even  actual 
hostility  that  he  encountered.  It  would  have 
been  more  astonishing  if  he  had  experienced  any- 
thing else. 

134 


\ 


Hector  Berlioz 


BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

We  must  remember  that  at  this  time  Berton, 
who  sang  Quand  on  est  toujours  vertuex,  on  aime 
a  voir  lever  Faurore,  passed  for  a  great  man. 
Beethoven's  symphonies  were  a  novelty,  in  Paris 
at  least,  and  a  scandal.  Haydn's  symphonies  in- 
spired a  critic  to  write,  "What  a  noise,  what  a 
noise!"  Orchestras  were  merely  collections  of 
thirty  or  forty  musicians. 

We  can  imagine,  therefore,  the  stupefaction 
and  horror  when  a  young  man,  just  out  of  school, 
demanded  fifty  violins,  twenty  violas,  twenty 
violoncellos,  eighteen  contrabasses,  four  flutes, 
four  oboes,  four  clarinets,  eight  bassoons,  twelve 
horns,  and  a  chorus  of  two  hundred  voices  as  a 
minimum.  And  that  is  not  all.  The  Tuba 
Mirum  necessitates  an  addition  of  thirty-eight 
trumpets  and  trombones,  divided  into  four  or- 
chestras and  placed  at  the  four  cardinal  points 
of  the  compass.  Besides,  there  have  to  be  eight 
pairs  of  drums,  played  by  ten  drummers,  four 
tam-tams,  and  ten  cymbals. 

The  story  of  this  array  of  drums  is  rather  in- 
teresting. Reicha,  Berlioz's  first  teacher,  had 
the  original  idea  of  playing  drum  taps  in  chords 

135 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

of  three  or  four  beats.  In  order  to  try  out  this 
effect,  he  composed  a  choral  piece,  L'Harmonie 
des  Spheres,  which  was  published  in  connection 
with  his  Traite  d'Harmonie.  But  Reicha's  gen- 
ius did  not  suffice  for  this  task.  He  was  a  good 
musician,  but  no  more  than  that.  His  choral 
piece  was  insignificant  and  remained  a  dead  let- 
ter. Berlioz  took  this  lost  effect  and  used  it  in 
his  Tuba  Mirum. 

However,  it  must  be  confessed  that  this  effect 
does  not  come  up  to  expectations.  In  a  church 
or  a  concert  hall  we  hear  a  confused  and  terrify- 
ing mingling  of  sounds,  and  from  time  to  time  we 
note  a  change  in  the  depth  of  tone  but  we  are 
unable  to  distinguish  the  pitch  of  the  chords. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  impression  this  Tuba 
Mirum  made  on  me  when  I  first  heard  it  at  St. 
Eustache  under  Berlioz's  own  direction.  It 
amounted  to  an  absolute  neglect  of  the  author's 
directions.  The  beginning  of  the  work  is 
marked  moderate,  later,  as  the  brass  comes  in, 
the  movement  is  quickened  and  becomes  andante 
maestro.  Most  of  the  time  the  moderato  was  in- 
terpreted as  an  allegro,  and  the  andante  maestro 

136 


BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

as  a  simple  moderate.  If  the  terrific  fanfare 
did  not  become,  as  some  one  ventured  to  call  it,  a 
"Setting  Out  for  the  Hunt,"  it  might  well  have 
been  the  accompaniment  for  a  sovereign's  en- 
trance to  his  capital.  In  order  to  give  this  fan- 
fare its  grandiose  character,  the  author  did  not 
take  easy  refuge  in  the  wailings  of  a  minor  key, 
but  he  burst  into  the  splendors  of  a  major  key. 
A  certain  grandeur  of  movement  alone  can  pre- 
serve its  gigantesque  quality  and  impression  of 
power. 

Granting  all  his  good  intentions,  in  trying  to 
give  us  a  suggestion  of  the  last  judgment  by  his 
accumulation  of  brass,  drums,  cymbals,  and  tam- 
tams, Berlioz  makes  us  think  of  Thor  among  the 
giants  trying  to  empty  the  drinking-horn  which 
was  filled  from  the  sea,  and  only  succeeding  in 
lowering  it  a  little.  Yet  even  that  was  an  ac- 
complishment. 

Berlioz  spoke  scornfully  of  Mozart's  Tuba 
Mirum  with  its  single  trombone.  "One  trom- 
bone," he  exclaimed,  "when  a  hundred  would  be 
none  too  many!"  Berlioz  wanted  to  make  us 
really  hear  the  trumpets  of  the  archangels.  Mo- 

137 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

zart  with  the  seven  notes  of  his  one  trombone 
suggested  the  same  idea  and  the  suggestion  is 
sufficient. 

We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  here  we 
are  in  the  midst  of  a  world  of  romanticism,  in  a 
world  of  color  and  picturesqueness,  which  could 
not  content  itself  with  so  little.  And  we  must 
remember  this  fact,  if  we  would  not  be  irritated 
by  the  oddities  of  UHostias,  with  its  deep  trom- 
bone notes  which  seem  to  come  from  the  very 
depths  of  Hell.  There  is  no  use  in  trying  to  find 
out  what  these  notes  mean.  Berlioz  told  us  him- 
self that  he  discovered  these  notes  at  a  time  when 
they  were  almost  unknown  and  he  wanted  to  use 
them.  The  contrast  between  these  terrifying 
notes  and  the  wailing  of  the  flutes  is  especially 
curious.  We  find  nothing  analogous  to  this  any- 
where else. 

The  delightful  Purgatoire,  where  the  author 
sees  a  chorus  of  souls  in  Purgatory,  is  much  bet- 
ter. His  Purgatory  has  no  punishments  nor  any 
griefs  save  the  awaiting,  the  long  and  painful 
awaiting,  of  eternal  happiness.  There  is  a  pro- 
cessional in  which  the  fugue  and  melody  alter- 

138 


BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

nate  in  the  most  felicitous  manner.  There  are 
sighs  and  plaints,  all  haunting  in  their  extreme 
expressiveness,  a  great  variety  beneath  an  ap- 
pearance of  monotony,  and  from  time  to  time  two 
wailing  notes.  These  notes  are  always  the  same, 
as  the  chorus  gives  them  as  a  plaint,  and  they  are 
both  affecting  and  artistic.  At  the  end  comes 
a  dim  ray  of  light  and  hope.  This  is  the  only  one 
in  the  work  save  the  Amen  at  the  end,  for  Faith 
and  Hope  should  not  be  looked  for  here.  The 
supplications  sound  like  prayers  which  do  not 
expect  to  be  answered.  No  one  would  dare  to 
describe  this  work  as  profane,  but  whether  it  is 
religious  or  not  is  a  question.  As  Boschot  has 
said,  what  it  expresses  above  all  is  terror  in  the 
presence  of  annihilation. 

When  the  Requiem  was  played  at  the  Troca- 
dero,  the  audience  was  greatly  impressed  and 
filed  out  slowly.  They  did  not  say,  "What  a 
masterpiece!"  but  "What  an  orchestra  leader!" 
Nowadays  people  go  to  see  a  conductor  direct  the 
orchestra  just  as  they  go  to  hear  a  tenor,  and  they 
arrogate  to  themselves  the  right  to  judge  the  con- 
ductors as  they  do  the  tenors.  But  what  a  fine 

139 


sport  it  is!  The  qualities  of  an  orchestra  con- 
ductor which  the  public  appreciates  are  his  ele- 
gance, his  gestures,  his  precision,  and  the  expres- 
siveness of  his  mimicry,  all  of  which  are  more 
often  directed  at  the  audience  than  at  the  orches- 
tra. But  all  these  things  are  of  secondary  con- 
sideration. What  makes  up  an  orchestra  conduc- 
tor's worth  are  the  excellence  of  execution  he  ob- 
tains from  the  musicians  and  the  perfect  inter- 
pretation of  the  author's  meaning — which  the 
audience  does  not  understand.  If  such  an  im- 
portant detail  as  the  author's  meaning  is  obscured 
and  slighted,  if  a  work  is  disfigured  by  absurd 
movements  and  by  an  expression  which  is  entirely 
different  from  what  the  author  wanted,  the  public 
may  be  dazzled  and  an  execrable  conductor,  pro- 
vided his  poses  are  good,  may  fascinate  his  audi- 
ence and  be  praised  to  the  skies. 

Formerly  the  conductor  never  saluted  his  audi- 
ence. The  understanding  was  that  the  work  and 
not  the  conductor  was  applauded.  The  Italians 
and  Germans  changed  all  that.  Lamoureux  was 
the  first  to  introduce  this  exotic  custom  in  France. 
The  public  was  a  little  surprised  at  first,  but  they 

140 


BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

soon  got  used  to  it.  In  Italy  the  conductor 
comes  on  the  stage  with  the  artists  to  salute  the 
audience.  There  is  nothing  more  laughable 
than  to  see  him,  as  the  last  note  of  an  opera  dies 
away,  jump  down  from  his  stand  and  run  like 
mad  to  reach  the  stage  in  time. 

The  excellence  of  the  work  of  English  choris= 
ters  has  been  highly  and  justly  praised.  Per- 
haps it  would  be  fairer  not  to  praise  them  so  unre- 
servedly when  we  are  so  severe  on  our  own.  Jus- 
tice often  leaves  something  to  be  desired.  At  all 

* 
events  it  must  be  admitted  that  Berlioz  treated  the 

voices  in  an  unfortunate  way.  Like  Beethoven, 
he  made  no  distinction  between  a  part  for  a  voice 
and  an  instrument.  While  except  for  a  few  rare 
passages  it  does  not  fall  as  low  as  the  atrocities 
which  disfigure  the  grandiose  Mass  in  D,  the  vo- 
cal part  of  the  Requiem  is  awkwardly  written. 
Singers  are  ill  at  ease  in  it,  for  the  timbre  and  reg- 
ularity of  the  voice  resent  such  treatment.  The 
tenor's  part  is  so  written  that  he  is  to  be  congratu- 
lated on  getting  through  it  without  any  accident, 
and  nothing  more  can  be  expected  of  him. 

What  a  pity  it  was  that  Berlioz  did  not  fall  in 
141 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

love  with  an  Italian  singer  instead  of  an  EnglisK 
tragedienne !  Cupid  might  have  wrought  a  mir- 
acle. The  author  of  the  Requiem  would  have 
lost  none  of  his  good  qualities,  but  he  might  have 
gained,  what,  for  the  lack  of  a  better  phrase,  is 
called  the  fingering  of  the  voice,  the  art  of  han- 
dling it  intelligently  and  making  it  give  without 
an  effort  the  best  effect  of  which  it  is  capable. 
But  Berlioz  had  a  horror  even  of  the  Italian  lan- 
guage, musical  as  that  is.  As  he  said  in  his 
Memoirs,  this  aversion  hid  from  him  the  true 
worth  of  Don  Juan  and  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro.  One 
wonders  whether  he  knew  that  his  idol,  Gluck, 
wrote  music  for  Italian  texts  not  only  in  the  case 
of  his  first  works  but  also  in  Orphee  and  Alceste. 
And  whether  he  knew  that  the  aria  "0  malheur- 
euse  Iphigenie"  was  an  Italian  song  badly  trans- 
lated into  French.  Perhaps  he  was  ignorant  of 
all  this  in  his  youth  for  Berlioz  was  a  genius,  not 
a  scholar. 

The  word  genius  tells  the  whole  story.  Ber- 
lioz wrote  badly.  He  maltreated  voices  and 
sometimes  permitted  himself  the  strangest  freaks. 
Nevertheless  he  is  one  of  the  commanding  figures 

142 


BERLIOZ'S  REQUIEM 

of  musical  art.  His  great  works  remind  us  of  the 
Alps  with  their  forests,  glaciers,  sunlight,  water- 
falls and  chasms.  There  are  people  who  do  not 
like  the  Alps.  So  much  the  worse  for  them. 


143 


CHAPTER  XIV 

PAULINE   VIARDOT 

Alfred  de  Mussel  covered  Maria  Malibran's 
tomb  with  immortal  flowers  and  he  also  told  us 
the  story  of  Pauline  Garcia's  debut.  There  is 
also  something  about  it  in  Theophile  Gautier's 
writings.  It  is  clear  from  both  accounts  that  her 
first  appearance  was  an  extraordinary  occasion. 
Natures  such  as  hers  reveal  themselves  at  once  to 
those  who  know  and  do  not  have  to  wait  to  arrive 
until  they  are  in  full  bloom.  Pauline  was  very 
young  at  the  time,  and  soon  afterwards  she  mar- 
ried M.  Viardot,  manager  of  the  Theatre-Italien 
and  one  of  the  finest  men  of  his  day.  She  went 
abroad  to  develop  her  talent,  but  she  returned  in 
1849  when  Meyerbeer  named  her  to  create  the 
role  of  Fides  in  Le  Prophete. 

Her  voice  was  tremendously  powerful,  prodig- 
ious in  its  range,  and  it  overcame  all  the  difficul- 

144 


PAULINE  VIARDOT 

ties  in  the  art  of  singing.  But  this  marvellous 
voice  did  not  please  everyone,  for  it  was  by  no 
means  smooth  and  velvety.  Indeed,  it  was  a 
little  harsh  and  was  likened  to  the  taste  of  a  bit- 
ter orange.  But  it  was  just  the  voice  for  a  trag- 
edy or  an  epic,  for  it  was  superhuman  rather  than 
human.  Light  things  like  Spanish  songs  and 
Chopin  mazurkas,  which  she  used  to  transpose  so 
that  she  could  sing  them,  were  completely  trans- 
formed by  that  voice  and  became  the  playthings 
of  an  Amazon  or  of  a  giantess.  She  lent  an  in- 
comparable grandeur  to  tragic  parts  and  to  the 
severe  dignity  of  the  oratorio. 

I  never  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  Madame 
Malibran,  but  Rossini  told  me  about  her.  He 
preferred  her  sister.  Madame  Malibran,  he 
said,  had  the  advantage  of  beauty.  In  addition, 
she  died  young  and  left  a  memory  of  an  artist  in 
full  possession  of  all  her  powers.  She  was  not 
the  equal  of  her  sister  as  a  musician  and  could  not 
have  survived  the  decline  of  her  voice  as  the  latter 
did. 

Madame  Viardot  was  not  beautiful,  indeed, 
she  was  far  from  it.  The  portrait  by  Ary  Schef- 

145 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

fer  is  the  only  one  which  shows  this  unequalled 
woman  truthfully  and  gives  some  idea  of  her 
strange  and  powerful  fascination.  What  made 
her  even  more  captivating  than  her  talent  as  a 
singer  was  her  personality — one  of  the  most 
amazing  I  have  ever  known.  She  spoke  and 
wrote  fluently  Spanish,  French,  Italian,  English 
and  German.  She  was  in  touch  with  all  the  cur- 
rent literature  of  these  countries  and  in  corres- 
pondence with  people  all  over  Europe. 

She  did  not  remember  when  she  learned  music. 
In  the  Garcia  family  music  was  in  the  air  they 
breathed.  So  she  protested  against  the  tradi- 
tion which  represented  her  father  as  a  tyrant  who 
whipped  his  daughters  to  make  them  sing.  I 
have  no  idea  how  she  learned  the  secrets  of  com- 
position, but  save  for  the  management  of  the  or- 
chestra she  knew  them  well.  She  wrote  numer- 
ous lieder  on  Spanish  and  German  texts  and  all  of 
these  show  a  faultless  diction.  But  contrary  to 
the  custom  of  most  composers  who  like  nothing 
better  than  to  show  their  compositions,  she  con- 
cealed hers  as  though  they  were  indiscretions. 
It  was  exceedingly  difficult  to  persuade  her  to  let 

146 


Mme.  Pauline  Viardot 


PAULINE  VIARDOT 

one  hear  them,  although  the  least  were  highly 
creditable.  Once  she  sang  a  Spanish  popular 
song,  a  wild  haunting  thing,  with  which  Rubin- 
stein fell  madly  in  love.  It  was  several  years  be- 
fore she  would  admit  that  she  wrote  it  herself. 

She  wrote  brilliant  operettas  in  collaboration 
with  Tourguenief,  but  they  were  never  published 
and  were  performed  only  in  private.  One  anec- 
dote will  show  her  versatility  as  a  composer. 
She  was  a  friend  of  Chopin  and  Liszt  and  her 
tastes  were  strongly  futuristic.  M.  Viardot,  on 
the  contrary,  was  a  reactionary  in  music.  He 
even  found  Beethoven  too  advanced.  One  day 
they  had  a  guest  who  was  also  a  reactionary. 
Madame  Viardot  sang  to  them  a  wonderful  work 
with  recitative,  aria  and  final  allegro,  which  they 
praised  to  the  skies.  She  had  written  it  ex- 
pressly for  the  occasion.  I  have  read  this  work 
and  even  the  cleverest  would  have  been  deceived. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  from  this  that  her 
compositions  were  mere  imitations.  On  the  con- 
trary they  were  extremely  original.  The  only 
explanation  why  those  that  were  published  have 
remained  unknown  and  why  so  many  were  un- 

147 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

published  is  that  this  admirable  artist  had  a  hor- 
ror of  publicity.  She  spent  half  her  life  in  teach- 
ing pupils  and  the  world  knew  nothing  about  it. 

During  the  Empire  the  Viardots  used  to  give  in 
their  apartment  on  Thursday  evenings  really  fine 
musical  festivals  which  my  surviving  contempo- 
raries still  remember.  From  the  salon  in  which 
the  famous  portrait  by  Ary  Scheffer  was  hung  and 
which  was  devoted  to  ordinary  instrumental  and 
vocal  music,  we  went  down  a  short  staircase  to  a 
gallery  filled  with  valuable  paintings,  and  finally 
to  an  exquisite  organ,  one  of  Cavaille-CoH's  mas- 
terpieces. In  this  temple  dedicated  to  music  we 
listened  to  arias  from  the  oratorios  of  Handel  and 
Mendelssohn.  She  had  sung  them  in  London, 
but  could  not  get  a  hearing  for  them  in  the  con- 
certs in  Paris  as  they  were  averse  to  such  vast 
compositions.  I  had  the  honor  to  be  her  regular 
accompanist  both  at  the  organ  and  the  piano. 

But  this  passionate  lover  of  song  was  an  all- 
round  musician.  She  played  the  piano  admir- 
ably, and  when  she  was  among  friends  she  over- 
came the  greatest  difficulties.  Before  her  Thurs- 
day audiences,  however,  she  limited  herself  to 

148 


PAULINE  VIARDOT 

chamber  music,  with  a  special  preference  for 
Henri  Reber's  duets  for  the  piano  and  the  violin. 
These  delicate,  artistic  works  are  unknown  to  the 
amateurs  of  to-day.  They  seem  to  prefer  to  the 
pure  juice  of  the  grape  in  crystal  glasses  poison- 
ous potions  in  cups  of  gold.  They  must  have  or- 
gies, sumptuous  ceilings,  a  deadly  luxury. 
They  do  not  understand  the  poet  who  sings,  "0 
rus,  quando  te  aspiciam!"  They  do  not  appre- 
ciate the  great  distinction  of  simplicity.  Reber's 
muse  is  not  for  them. 

Madame  Viardot  was  as  learned  a  musician  as 
any  one  could  be  and  she  was  among  the  first  sub- 
scribers to  the  complete  edition  of  Sebastian 
Bach's  works.  We  know  what  an  astounding 
revelation  that  work  was.  Each  year  brought 
ten  religious  cantatas,  and  each  year  brought  us 
new  surprises  in  the  unexpected  variety  and  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  work.  We  thought  we  had 
known  Sebastian  Bach,  but  now  we  learned  how 
really  to  know  him.  We  found  him  a  writer  of 
unusual  versatility  and  a  great  poet.  His  Wohl- 
temperirte  Klavier  had  given  us  only  a  hint  of 
all  this.  The  beauties  of  this  famous  work 

149 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

needed  exposition  for,  in  the  absence  of  definite 
instructions,  opinions  differed.  In  the  cantatas 
the  meaning  of  the  words  serves  as  an  indication 
and  through  the  analogy  between  the  forms  of 
expression,  it  is  easy  to  see  pretty  clearly  what 
the  author  intended  in  his  Ktavier  pieces. 

One  fine  day  the  annual  volume  was  found  to 
contain  a  cantata  in  several  parts  written  for  a 
contralto  solo  accompanied  by  stringed  instru- 
ments, oboes  and  an  organ  obligate.  The  organ 
was  there  and  the  organist  as  well.  So  we  as- 
sembled the  instruments,  Stockhausen,  the  bari- 
tone, was  made  the  leader  of  the  little  orchestra, 
and  Madame  Viardot  sang  the  cantata.  I  sus- 
pect that  the  author  had  never  heard  his  work 
sung  in  any  such  manner.  I  cherish  the  mem- 
ory of  that  day  as  one  of  the  most  precious  in  my 
musical  career.  My  mother  and  M.  Viardot 
were  the  only  listeners  to  this  exceptional  exhibi- 
tion. We  did  not  dare  to  repeat  it  before  hearers 
who  were  not  ready  for  it.  What  would  now  be 
a  great  success  would  have  fallen  flat  at  that  time,. 
And  nothing  is  more  irritating  than  to  see  an 
audience  cold  before  a  beautiful  work.  It  is  far 

150 


PAULINE  VIARDOT 

better  to  keep  to  one's  self  treasures  which  will  be 
unappreciated. 

One  thing  will  always  stand  in  the  way  of  the 
vogue  of  Sebastian  Bach's  vocal  works — the  dif- 
ficulty of  translation.  When  they  are  rendered 
into  French,  they  lose  all  their  charm  and  often- 
*.:rnes  become  ridiculous. 

One  of  the  most  amazing  characteristics  of 
Madame  Viardot's  talent  was  her  astonishing  fa- 
cility in  assimilating  all  styles  of  music.  She 
was  trained  in  the  old  Italian  music  and  she  re- 
vealed its  beauties  as  no  one  else  has  ever  done. 
As  for  myself,  I  saw  only  its  faults.  Then  she 
sang  Schumann  and  Gluck  and  even  Glinka 
whom  she  sang  in  Russian.  Nothing  was  for- 
eign to  her ;  she  was  at  home  everywhere. 

She  was  a  great  friend  of  Chopin  and  she  re- 
membered his  playing  almost  exactly  and  could 
give  the  most  valuable  directions  about  the  way 
he  interpreted  his  works.  I  learned  from  her 
that  the  great  pianist's  (great  musician's,  rather) 
execution  was  much  simpler  than  has  been  gen- 
erally supposed.  It  was  as  far  removed  from 

151 


any  manifestation  of  bad  taste  as  it  was  from  cold 
correctness.  She  told  me  the  secret  of  the  true 
tempo  Tubato  without  which  Chopin's  music  is 
disfigured.  It  in  no  way  resembles  the  disloca- 
tions by  which  it  is  so  often  caricatured. 

I  have  spoken  of  her  great  talent  as  a  pianist. 
We  saw  this  one  evening  at  a  concert  given  by 
Madame  Schumann.  After  Madame  Viardot 
had  sung  some  of  Schumann's  lieder  with  the 
great  pianist  playing  the  accompaniments,  the 
two  great  artists  played  the  illustrious  author's 
duet  for  two  pianos,  which  fairly  bristles  with  dif- 
ficulties, with  equal  virtuosity. 

When  Madame  Viardot's  voice  began  to  break, 
she  was  advised  to  devote  herself  to  the  piano. 
If  she  had,  she  would  have  found  a  new  career 
and  a  second  reputation.  But  she  did  not  want 
to  make  the  change,  and  for  several  years  she  pre- 
sented the  sorry  spectacle  of  genius  contending 
with  adversity.  Her  voice  was  broken,  stub- 
born, uneven,  and  intermittent.  An  entire  gen- 
eration knew  her  only  in  a  guise  unworthy  of  her. 

Her  immoderate  love  of  music  was  the  cause  of 
the  early  modification  of  her  voice.  She  wanted 

152 


PAULINE  VIARDOT 

to  sing  everything  she  liked  and  she  sang  Valen- 
tine in  Les  Huguenots,  Donna  Anna  in  Don  Juan, 
besides  other  roles  she  should  never  have  under- 
taken if  she  wanted  to  preserve  her  voice.  She 
came  to  realize  this  at  the  end  of  her  life. 
"Don't  do  as  I  did,"  she  once  told  a  pupil.  "I 
wanted  to  sing  everything,  and  I  ruined  my 


voice." 


Happy  are  the  fiery  natures  which  burn  them- 
selves out  and  glory  in  the  sword  that  wears  away 
the  scabbard. 


153 


CHAPTER  XV 

ORPHEE 

We  know,  or,  rather  we  used  to  know — f or  we 
are  beginning  to  forget — that  there  is  an  admir- 
able edition  of  Gluck's  principal  works.  This 
edition  was  due  to  the  interest  of  an  unusual 
woman,  Mile.  Fanny  Pelletan,  who  devoted  a  part 
of  her  fortune  to  this  real  monument  and  to  fulfill 
a  wish  Berlioz  expressed  in  one  of  his  works. 
Mile.  Pelletan  was  an  unusually  intelligent 
woman  and  an  accomplished  musician,  but  she 
needed  some  one  to  help  her  in  this  large  and 
formidable  task.  She  was  unassuming  and  dis- 
trusted her  own  powers,  so  that  she  secured  as  a 
collaborator  a  German  musician,  named  Damcke, 
who  had  lived  in  Paris  a  long  time  and  who  was 
highly  esteemed.  He  gave  her  the  moral  sup- 
port she  needed  and  some  bad  advice  as  well, 
which  she  felt  obliged  to  follow.  This  collabora- 

154 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

tion  accounts  for  the  change  of  the  contralto  parts 
to  counter-tenors.  It  also  accounts  for  the  fact 
that  in  every  instance  the  parts  for  the  clarinets 
are  indicated  in  C,  in  this  way  attributing  to  the 
author  a  formal  intention  he  never  had.  Gluck 
wrote  the  parts  for  the  clarinets  without  bother- 
ing whether  the  player — to  whom  he  left  a  free- 
dom of  choice  and  the  work  of  transposition — 
would  use  his  instrument  in  C,  B,  or  A.  This 
method  was  not  peculiar  to  Gluck.  Other  com- 
posers used  it  as  well,  and  traces  of  it  are  found 
even  in  Auber's  works. 

After  Damcke's  death  Mile.  Pelletan  got  me 
to  help  her  in  this  work.  I  wanted  to  change  the 
method,  but  the  edition  would  have  lost  its  unity 
and  she  would  not  consent.  It  was  time  that 
Damcke's  collaboration  ended.  He  belonged  to 
the  tribe  of  German  professors  who  have  since  be- 
come legion.  Due  to  their  baneful  influence,  in 
a  short  time,  when  the  old  editions  have  disap- 
peared, the  works  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Bee- 
thoven, even  of  Chopin,  will  be  all  but  unrecog- 
nizable. The  works  of  Sebastian  Bach  and 
Handel  will  be  the  only  ones  in  existence  in  their 

155 


ORPHEE 

pristine  purity  of  form,  thanks  to  the  admirable 
editions  of  the  Bach  und  Handel  Gesselschaft. 

When  Mile.  Pelletan  brought  me  into  the 
work,  the  two  Iphigenie  had  been  published;  Al- 
ceste  was  about  to  be,  and  Armide  was  ready.  In 
Armide  Damcke  had  been  entirely  carried  away 
by  his  zeal  for  "improvements" — a  zeal  that  can 
do  so  much  harm.  It  was  time  this  was  stopped. 
Not  only  had  he  corrected  imaginary  faults  here 
and  there,  but  he  had  also  inserted  things  of  his 
own  invention.  He  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to 
re-orchestrate  the  ballet  music,  in  the  naive  be- 
lief that  he  was  bringing  out  the  author's  real 
meaning  better  than  he  had  done  himself.  It 
took  an  enormous  amount  of  time  to  undo  this 
mischief,  for  I  distrusted  somewhat  my  own  lights 
and  Mile.  Pelletan  had  too  high  an  opinion  of 
Damcke's  work  and  did  not  dare  to  override  his 
judgment. 

That  excellent  woman  did  not  live  to  see  the 
end  of  her  work.  She  began  the  preparation  of 
Orphee,  but  she  died  almost  at  once.  So  I  was 
left  to  finish  the  score  alone  without  that  valuable 
experience  and  masterly  insight  by  which  she 

156 


ORPHEE 

solved  the  most  difficult  problems.  And  there 
were  real  enigmas  to  be  solved  at  every  step. 
The  old  engraved  scores  of  Gluck's  works  repro- 
duced his  manuscripts  faithfully  enough,  but 
they  bore  evidence  of  carelessness  and  amazing 
inaccuracy.  They  are  mere  sketches  instead  of 
complete  scores.  Many  details  are  vague  and 
vagueness  is  not  permissible  in  a  serious  edition. 
It  follows  that  the  different  editions  of  Gluck's 
works  published  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  how- 
ever sumptuous  or  careful  they  may  be,  are 
worthless.  The  Pelletan  edition  alone  can  be 
consulted  with  confidence,  because  we  were  the 
only  ones  to  have  all  extant  and  authentic  docu'' 
ments  in  the  library  at  the  Opera  to  set  us  right. 
We  had  scores  copied  for  actual  performances 
on  the  stage  and  portions  of  orchestral  parts  of 
incalculable  value.  In  addition,  we  had  no  aim 
or  preoccupation  in  elaborating  this  material 
other  than  to  reconstitute  as  closely  as  possible 
the  thought  of  the  author. 

Switzerland  is  a  country  where  artistic  produc- 
tions are  not  unusual.     Every  year  we  have  re- 

157 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ports  of  some  grandiose  performance  in  which 
the  people  take  part  themselves.  They  come 
from  every  direction  to  help,  even  from  a  consid- 
erable distance,  thanks  to  the  many  means  of 
communication  in  that  delightful  land.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  to  learn  that  a  theatre  has 
been  built  in  the  pretty  town  of  Mezieres,  near 
Lusanne,  for  the  performance  of  the  works  of  a 
young  poet,  named  Morax.  These  works  are 
dramas  with  choruses,  and  the  surrounding  coun- 
try furnishes  the  singers.  The  work  given  in 
1911  was  Allenor — the  music  by  Gustave  Doret 
— and  it  was  a  great  success. 

Gustave  Doret  is  a  real  artist  and  he  never  for 
a  moment  thought  of  keeping  the  Theatre  du 
Jorat  for  his  own  exclusive  use.  He  dreamt  of 
giving  Gluck's  works  in  their  original  form,  for 
they  are  always  altered  and  changed  according  to 
the  fancies  or  incompetency  of  the  performers  or 
directors.  They  formed  a  large  and  influential 
committee  and  a  substantial  guarantee  fund  was 
subscribed.  Then  they  gave  a  brilliant  banquet 
at  which  the  Princess  of  Brancovan  was  present. 
And  Paderewski,  one  of  the  most  enthusiastic 

158 


ORPHEE 

promoters  of  the  enterprise,  delivered  an  elo- 
quent address.  No  one  should  be  surprised  at 
either  his  zeal  or  his  eloquence.  Paderewski  is 
not  only  a  pianist;  he  is  a  man  of  great  intellect 
as  well, — a  great  artist  who  permits  himself  the 
luxury  of  playing  the  piano  marvellously. 

As  he  knew  that  I  had  spent  several  years  in 
studying  Gluck's  works  under  the  microscope,  so 
to  speak,  Gustave  Doret  did  me  the  honor  to  ask 
my  advice.  His  choice  for  the  opening  work  was 
Orphee,  which  requires  only  three  principals,  Or- 
pheus, Eurydice,  and  Love.  It  has  become  the 
custom  to  add  a  fourth,  a  Happy  Spirit,  but  this 
spirit  is  one  of  Carvalho's  inventions  and  has  no 
reason  for  existence. 

There  are,  however,  two  Orphee.  The  first  is 
Orfeo  which  was  written  in  Italian,  on  Calzabigi's 
text,  and  was  first  presented  at  Venice  in  1761. 
The  role  of  Orpheus  in  this  score  was  written  for  a 
contralto  and  was  designed  for  the  eunuch  Quad- 
agni.  The  Venetian  engravers  of  that  day  were 
either  incompetent  or,  perhaps,  there  were  none, 
for  the  scores  of  Gluck's  Alceste  in  Italian  and 
Haydn's  Seasons  were  printed  from  type.  How- 

159 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ever  that  may  be  the  score  of  Orfeo  was  engraved 
in  Paris.  The  composer  Philidor  corrected  the 
proofs.  He  little  thought  that  Orfeo  would  ever 
get  so  far  as  Paris,  so  he  appropriated  the  ro- 
manza  in  the  first  act  and  introduced  it  with  but 
slight  modifications  into  his  opera-comique  Le 
Sorcier.  Later  on  Marie  Antoinette  called 
Gluck  to  Paris  and  thus  afforded  him  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  complete  development  of  his  gen- 
ius. After  he  had  written  Iphigenie  en  Aulide, 
performed  in  1774,  especially  for  the  Opera,  he 
had  the  idea  of  adapting  Orfeo  for  the  French 
stage.  To  tell  the  truth  he  must  have  thought 
of  it  before,  for  Orphee  appeared  at  the  Opera 
only  three  months  after  Iphigenie  and  it  had  been 
entirely  rewritten  in  collaboration  with  Moline. 
The  contralto  part  had  been  changed  to  tenor  and 
so  the  principal  role  was  given  to  Legros. 

While  it  may  be  true  that  the  author  improved 
this  work  in  the  French  version,  it  is  not  true  in 
every  case.  There  is  some  question  whether  the 
overture  existed  in  the  Italian  score.  It  is  gener- 
ally believed  that  it  did,  but  there  are  old  copies 

160 


ORPHEE 

of  this  version  in  existence  and  they  begin  the 
opera  with  the  funeral  chorus  and  show  no  over- 
ture at  all.  This  overture,  although  the  Mer- 
cure  de  France  treats  it  as  a  "beautiful  symphonic 
piece  which  serves  as  a  good  introduction  to  the 
work,"  in  reality  does  not  resemble  the  style  of 
the  rest  at  all.  It  in  no  way  prepares  for  that 
admirable  chorus  at  the  beginning — unequaled 
of  its  kind — which  Orpheus's  broken  hearted  cry 
of  "Eurydice!  Eurydice!"  makes  so  pathetic. 

The  first  act  of  Orfeo  ends  in  a  tumultuous 
effect  of  the  stringed  instruments  which  was  evi- 
dently intended  to  indicate  a  change  of  scene  and 
the  appearance  of  the  stage  settings  of  the  in- 
fernal regions.  This  passage  does  not  appear  in 
the  French  Orphee  and  it  is  lacking  in  the  en- 
graved score,  where  it  is  replaced  by  a  bravura 
aria  of  doubtful  taste,  accompanied  by  a  single 
quartet.  Whether  the  stage  managers  wanted 
an  entr'acte  or  the  tenor,  Legros,  demanded  an 
effective  aria,  or  for  both  these  reasons,  a  reading 
of  the  manuscript  indicates  how  absolutely  the 
author's  meaning  was  changed.  There  is  no 

161 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

doubt  that  except  for  some  such  reason  he  would 
have  changed  this  aria  and  put  it  in  harmony  with 
the  rest  of  the  work. 

For  a  long  time  this  aria  was  attributed  to  Ber- 
toni,  the  composer,  and  Gluck  was  accused  of 
plagiarizing  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  and  to  the 
contrary,  this  aria  came  from  an  older  Italian 
opera  of  Gluck's.  Bertoni  not  only  imitated  it  in 
one  of  his  scores,  but  he  had  the  hardihood  to 
write  an  Orfeo  on  the  text  already  followed  by 
Gluck  in  which  he  plagiarized  the  work  of  his 
illustrious  predecessor  in  a  scandalous  fashion. 

This  same  aria,  changed  with  real  genius  and 
performed  with  prodigious  eclat  by  Madame  Viar- 
dot,  and  re-orchestrated  by  myself,  was  one  of 
the  strongest  reasons  for  the  success  of  the  fa- 
mous performances  at  the  Theatre-Lyrique. 
But  it  is  well  understood  that  it  could  not  properly 
find  a  place  in  an  edition  where  the  sole  end  was 
artistic  sincerity  and  purity  of  the  text. 

From  this  point  of  view  it  would  seem  that  the 
best  manner  of  giving  Orphee  would  be  to  con- 
form to  the  author's  definitive  version.  A  tenor 
would  have  to  take  the  part  of  Orpheus,  since  we 

162 


ORPHEE 

no  longer  have  male  contraltos,  and  to  keep  to 
this  kind  of  a  voice  in  Orphee  we  would  have  to 
have  recourse  to  what  is  called,  in  theatrical 
terms,  a  travesti.  There  are  obstacles  to  this, 
however.  The  pitch  has  changed  since  the 
Eighteenth  Century;  it  has  gone  up  and  it  is  now 
impossible,  or  nearly  so,  to  sing  the  role  written 
for  Legros.  The  contraltos  of  the  Italian  chorus 
have  become  the  counter-tenors,  who,  for  the 
same  reason,  find  themselves  struggling  with  too 
sharp  notes. 

In  the  Seventeenth  Century  the  French  pitch 
was  even  more  flat,  and  it  is  a  great  pity,  for  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  perform  our  old  music,  on 
account  of  the  insuperable  obstacles.  This  is 
not  the  case  in  Germany,  however,  or  in  Italy,  and 
that  is  the  reason  why  the  works  of  Sebastian 
Bach  and  Mozart  can  be  sung.  The  same  is  true 
of  Gluck's  Italian  works. 

This  was  the  reason  that  Doret  gave  the  part  of 
Orpheus  to  a  contralto,  just  as  is  done  at  the 
Opera-Comique.  The  poetic  character  of  the 
part  of  Orpheus  lends  itself  excellently  to  such 
a  feminine  interpretation.  But  in  resuming  the 

163 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

key  of  the  Italian  score,  it  is  necessary  to  go  back, 
at  least  to  a  considerable  degree,  to  the  instru- 
mentation. By  a  curious  anomaly  the  beautiful 
recitative,  accompanied  by  the  murmur  of  brooks 
and  the  songs  of  the  birds,  is  in  C  major  in  both 
scores.  The  author  could  not  have  changed 
them.  On  the  contrary  he  modified  his  instru- 
mentation greatly,  simplified  and  perfected  it. 

We  know  that  the  authors,  in  utter  defiance  of 
mythology,  wanted  a  happy  ending  and  so 
brought  Eurydice  back  to  life  a  second  time. 
Love  accomplished  this  miracle  and  the  work 
ended  with  the  song  "Love  Triumphs,"  which  is 
exceedingly  joyful  and  in  harmony  with  the  situa- 
tion. They  did  not  want  this  ending,  which  was 
in  Orfeo  and  which  Gluck  retained  in  Orphee,  at 
the  old  Theatre-Lyrique  and  the  Opera-Comique,. 
and  they  replaced  it  with  a  chorus  by  Echo  and 
Narcissus.  This  chorus  is  charming,  but  that 
does  not  excuse  it.  Joy  was  what  the  author 
wanted  and  this  does  not  give  joy  at  all.  Gluck's 
finale  is  regarded  as  not  sufficiently  distinguished, 
but  this  is  wrong.  The  real  finale  was  sung  at 

164 


ORPHEE 

Mezieres  and  it  was  found  that  it  was  not  at  all 
common,  but  that  its  frank  gaiety  was  in  the  best 
of  taste. 

Gluck  had  no  scruples  about  grinding  several 
grists  from  the  same  sack  and  drawing  from  his 
old  works  to  help  out  his  new  ones.  So  the  par- 
asitical aria  attributed  to  Bertoni  was  written  by 
Gluck  in  the  first  place  in  1764  for  a  soprano. 
He  wove  this  into  his  opera  Aristo  in  1769. 
This  is  also  true  of  the  trio,  Tendre  Amour,  which 
precedes  the  finale  in  the  last  act.  A  serious- 
minded  analyst  might  be  tempted  to  admire  the 
profound  psychology  of  the  author  in  mingling 
doleful  accents  with  expressions  of  joy,  but  he 
would  have  his  labor  for  his  pains.  The  trio 
was  taken  from  the  opera  Elena  e  Paride,  where 
Gluck  expressed  strongly  wrought  up  emotions. 
Doret  did  not  keep  these  two  passages  and  one 
can't  blame  him.  On  the  other  hand,  he  re- 
tained, by  making  it  an  entr'acte,  the  Ballet  des 
Furies.  This  was  taken  from  a  ballet,  Don  Gio- 
vanni o  il  convitato  de  pietra,  which  was  per- 
formed at  Vienna  in  1761.  This  passage  was 

165 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

used  as  the  accompaniment  to  Don  Juan's  de- 
scent into  Hell,  surrounded  by  his  band  of  de- 
mons. 

Many  of  Gluck's  compatriots  came  to  Mezieres 
to  see  Orphee  and  they  were  loyal  enough  to  rec- 
ognize the  superiority  of  the  performance. 
Some  even  had  the  courage  to  say,  "We  murder 
Gluck  in  Germany." 

I  discovered  that  fact  a  long  time  ago.  In  my 
youth  I  was  indignant  when  I  saw  Paris,  where 
Gluck  wrote  his  finest  works,  quite  neglecting 
them,  whereas  Germany  continued  to  promote 
them.  In  those  days  I  was  frequently  called  to 
the  other  side  of  the  Rhine  to  play  in  concerts, 
and  I  watched  for  a  chance  to  see  one  of  these 
masterpieces  which  had  been  forgotten  in  France. 
So  it  was  with  the  liveliest  joy  that  one  day  I 
entered  one  of  the  leading  German  theaters  where 
they  were  giving  Armide.  What  a  hollow  mock- 
ery it  was ! 

Madame  Malten  was  Armide,  and  she  was 
everything  that  could  be  wished  hi  voice,  talent, 
style,  beauty  and  charm.  She  spoke  French 
without  an  accent  and  was  as  remarkable  as  an 

166 


ORPHEE 

actress  as  a  singer,  so  she  would  without  doubt 
have  had  great  success  at  the  Opera  in  Paris. 
She  was  Armide  herself,  an  irresistible  enchant- 
ress. 

But  the  rest !  Renaud  was  a  raw  boy,  and  his 
shaven  chin  brought  out  in  sharp  relief  enormous 
black  moustaches  with  long  waxed  ends.  He 
had  a  voice,  to  be  sure,  but  no  style,  and  no  un- 
derstanding of  the  work  he  was  trying  to  inter- 
pret. 

Hidradot  is  an  old  sorcerer  tempered  in  the 
fires  of  Hell.  He  enters,  saying: 

"I  see  hard  by  Death  that  threatens  me, 
And  already  old  age,  that  has  chilled  my  blood, 
Is  on  me,  bowing  me  beneath  a  crushing  burden." 

Imagine  my  surprise  at  seeing  come  on  the 
stage  a  magnificent  specimen  of  manhood,  with  a 
curled  black  beard,  in  all  the  glory  of  his  youth 
and  vigor  superbly  arrayed  in  a  red  cloak 
trimmed  with  gold ! 

The  stage  setting  was  also  extraordinary.  In 
the  second  act  Renaud  went  to  sleep  at  the  back 
of  the  stage,  forcing  Armide  to  speak  the  whole 

167 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

of  the  beautiful  scene  which  follows,  one  of  the 
most  important  in  the  part,  at  a  distance  from  the 
footlights  and  with  her  back  to  the  audience. 

As  for  the  orchestra,  sometimes  it  followed 
Gluck's  text  and  sometimes  it  borrowed  bits  of  or- 
chestration which  Meyerbeer  had  written  for  the 
Opera  at  Berlin.  This  orchestration  is  interest- 
ing, and  I  know  it  well  for  I  have  had  it  in  hand. 
It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Gluck,  from  some  in- 
explicable caprice,  did  not  give  the  same  care  to 
the  instrumentation  of  Armide  that  he  did  to  Or- 
phee,  Alcesti,  and  the  Iphigenies.  The  trom- 
bones do  not  appear  at  all  and  the  drums  and 
flutes  only  at  rare  intervals.  Re-orchestration  is 
not  absolutely  necessary  and  Meyerbeer's  is  no 
more  reprehensible  than  those  with  which  Mozart 
enriched  Handel's  Messe  and  La  Fete  d'Alexan- 
dre.  What  was  inadmissible  was  not  deciding 
frankly  for  one  version  or  the  other.  It  was  like 
a  badly  patched  coat  which  shows  the  old  cloth 
in  one  place  and  the  new  in  another. 

Afterwards  I  saw  Armide  treated  in  another 
way. 

Did  you  ever  happen  to  cherish  the  memory  of 
168 


ORPHEE 

a  delightful  and  picturesque  city,  where  every- 
thing made  a  harmonious  whole,  where  the  beau- 
tiful walks  were  arched  over  by  old  trees — and 
later  come  back  to  it  to  find  it  embellished,  the 
trees  cut  down,  the  walks  replaced  by  enormous 
buildings  which  dwarfed  into  insignificance  the 
ancient  marvels  which  gave  the  city  its  charm? 

This  was  the  case  with  me  when  I  saw  Armide 
again  in  a  city  which  I  shall  not  name.  The 
opera  had  been  judged  superannuated  and  had 
been  "improved."  A  young  composer  had  writ- 
ten a  new  score  in  which  he  inserted  here  and 
there  such  bits  of  Gluck  as  he  thought  worthy  of 
being  preserved.  A  costly  and  magnificently  im- 
becile luxuriousness  set  off  the  whole  piece.  I 
may  be  pardoned  the  cruel  adjective  when  I  say 
that  in  the  scene  of  Hate,  so  deeply  inspired,  and 
which  takes  place  in  a  sort  of  cave,  they  relegated 
the  chorus  to  the  wings  to  make  a  place  for  drag- 
ons, fantastic  birds  beating  their  wings,  and  other 
deviltries.  This,  of  course,  deprived  the  chorus 
of  all  its  power  and  distinction. 

But  the  best  was  at  the  end  of  the  second  act. 
The  forest  with  its  trees,  grass  and  rocks  entirely 

169 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

disappeared  in  the  flies  taking  Renaud  and  Ar- 
mide  with  it  and  the  spectator  was  left,  for  some 
unknown  reason,  looking  at  a  background  sur- 
rounded by  mountains.  Then,  by  a  marvel  of 
mechanism,  there  appeared  to  the  sound  of  ultra- 
modern music,  Renaud  sleeping  on  a  bed  of  state, 
with  Armide  standing  at  the  foot  and  stretching 
forth  her  hand  with  a  gesture  of  authority,  de- 
claiming in  a  solemn  tone, 

"Rinaldo,  I  love  you!" 

and  the  curtain  fell  to  the  applause  of  the  audi- 
ence. 

We  owe  much  to  Germany  in  music,  for  it  has 
produced  many  great  musicians.  It  can  set  off 
against  our  trinity  of  Corneille,  Racine,  and  Mol- 
iere,  the  no  less  glorious  Haydn,  Mozart  and  Bee- 
thoven. But  Germany  seems  to  have  lost  all 
respect  for  the  meaning  of  its  own  music  and  for 
its  own  glories.  Instead  of  watching  over  the 
purity  of  the  text  of  its  masterpieces,  it  alters 
them  at  its  pleasure  and  makes  them  all  but  un- 
recognizable. We  abuse  nuances  but  they  were 

170 


ORPHEE 

rare  in  earlier  days.  An  orchestra  conductor 
who  performs  symphonies  by  Haydn  and  Mozart, 
even  by  Beethoven,  has  the  right  to  make  addi- 
tions. But  it  is  intolerable  that  the  scores 
should  be  printed  with  these  nuances  and  bow- 
ings which  are  in  no  way  due  to  the  author  and 
which  are  imposed  by  the  editor.  Nevertheless, 
that  is  what  happens,  and  it  is  impossible  to  tell 
where  the  authentic  text  ends  and  the  interpola- 
tion begins.  In  addition,  the  interpolation  may 
be  the  exact  contrary  of  what  the  author  intended. 

This  evil  is  at  its  worst  in  piano  music.  Our 
famous  teachers,  like  Marmontel  and  Le  Coup- 
pey,  have  published  editions  of  the  classics  which 
are  full  of  their  own  directions.  But  the  player 
is  forewarned ;  it  is  the  Marmontel  or  Le  Couppey 
edition  and  makes  no  pretence  of  authenticity. 
In  Germany,  however,  there  are  supposedly  au- 
thentic editions,  based  on  the  originals,  but  which 
superimpose  their  own  pernicious  inventions  on 
the  author's  text. 

The  touch  of  the  piano  used  to  be  different 
from  what  it  is  to-day.  The  directions  in  Mo- 
zart's and  Beethoven's  works  show  that  they  used 

171 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  execution  of  stringed  instruments  as  their 
model.  The  touch  was  lighter  and  the  fingers 
were  raised  so  that  the  notes  were  separated 
slightly,  and  not  run  together  except  when  indi- 
cated. The  supposition  is  that  this  must  have 
led  to  a  dryness  of  tone.  I  remember  to  have 
heard  in  my  childhood  some  old  people  whose 
playing  was  singularly  hopping.  Then,  there 
came  a  reaction,  and  with  it  a  passion  for  slurring 
the  notes.  When  I  was  Stamaty's  pupil,  it  was 
considered  most  difficult  to  "tie"  the  notes;  that 
required,  however,  only  dexterity  and  suppleness. 
"When  she  learns  to  'tie,'  she  will  know  how 
to  play,"  said  the  mother  of  a  young  pianist. 
Nevertheless,  the  trick  of  perpetual  legato  be- 
comes exceedingly  monotonous  and  takes  away 
all  character  from  the  pianoforte  classics.  But 
it  is  insisted  on  everywhere  in  the  modern  Ger- 
man editions.  Throughout  there  are  connec- 
tions seemingly  interminable  in  length,  and  indi- 
cations of  legato,  sempre  legato,  which  the  author 
not  only  did  not  indicate,  but  in  places  where  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  he  intended  the  exact  opposite. 
If  this  is  the  case,  what  shall  be  said  of  mark- 
172 


ORPHEE 

ing  the  fingering  on  all  the  notes — which  often 
makes  good  playing  impossible.  Liszt  taught 
hundreds  of  pupils  according  to  the  best  princi- 
ples, yet  such  erroneous  principles  have  pre- 
vailed ! 

Disciples  of  the  ivory  keys  are  numerous  in 
our  day.  Everybody  wants  to  have  a  piano,  and 
everybody  plays  it  or  thinks  he  does,  which  is  not 
always  the  same  thing,  and  few  really  understand 
what  the  term  "to  play  the  piano,"  so  currently 
used,  means. 

The  harpsichord  reigned  supreme  before  the 
appearance  of  the  piano — an  instrument  which 
is  beloved  by  some  and  execrated  by  others.  To 
his  utter  amazement  Reyer  was  considered  an 
enemy  of  the  pianoforte.  The  harpsichord  has 
been  revived  of  late  so  that  it  is  needless  to  de- 
scribe it.  It  lacks  strength,  and  that  was  the 
reason  it  was  dethroned  in  a  period  when  strength 
was  everything.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  dis- 
tinction and  elegance.  As  the  player  can  not 
modify  the  intensity  of  the  sound  by  a  single  pres- 
sure of  the  finger — in  which  it  resembles  the  or- 
gan— like  the  organ,  with  its  multiple  keyboards 

173 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

and  registers,  the  harpsichord  has  a  wide  variety 
of  effects  and  affords  the  opportunity  for  several 
octaves  to  sound  simultaneously.  As  a  result, 
while  music  written  for  the  harpsichord  gains  in 
strength  and  expression  on  the  modern  instru- 
ment, it  often  assumes  a  deceptive  monotony  for 
which  the  author  is  not  responsible. 

The  players  of  the  harpsichord  were  ignorant 
of  muscular  effects;  there  was  nothing  of  the  un- 
chained lion  about  them.  The  delicate  hands  of 
a  marquise  lost  none  of  their  gracefulness  as  they 
skimmed  over  the  keyboards,  and  the  red  or  black 
keys  emphasized  their  whiteness. 

The  introduction  of  the  hammer  in  the  place  of 
the  tiny  nib  permitted  the  modification  of  the 
quality  of  sound  by  differences  in  the  pressure  of 
the  fingers,  and  also  the  production  at  will  of  such 
nuances  as  forte  and  piano  without  recourse  to 
the  different  registers.  This  is  the  reason  why 
the  new  instrument  was  first  called  the  piano- 
forte. The  word  was  long  and  cumbersome  and 
was  cut  in  half.  When  it  became  necessary  to 
assault  the  note,  they  used  the  phrase  "to  hit  the 
forte."  The  papers  which  gave  accounts  of 

174 


ORPHEE 

young  Mozart's  concerts  praised  him  for  his  abil- 
ity to  "hit." 

Nevertheless  one  did  not  hit  hard.  These 
keyboards  with  their  limited  keys  responded  so 
easily  that  a  child's  fingers  were  sufficient.  I 
first  played  on  one  of  these  instruments  at  the 
age  of  three.  It  was  made  by  Zimmerman, 
whose  son  was  Gounod's  father-in-law. 

Later,  the  weight  of  the  keys  was  increased  to 
get  a  greater  volume  of  sound.  Then,  when 
long-haired  virtuosi,  playing  by  main  strength, 
produced  peals  of  thunder,  they  really  "toucha 
du  piano" 

To  return  to  Orphee  and  end  as  we  began,  I 
have  to  make  a  painful  confession.  If  the  works 
of  Gluck  in  general  and  Orphee  in  particular 
have  had  a  happy  influence  on  our  musical  taste, 
a  passage  from  this  last  work  has  been  a  noxious 
influence, — the  famous  chorus  of  the  demons 
"Quel  est  Vaudacieux — qui  dans  ces  sombres 
lieux — ose  porter  ses  pas? 

In  the  old  days  French  opera  was  based  on  dec- 
lamation and  it  was  scrupulously  respected  even 

175 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

in  the  arias.  There  is  a  fine  example  of  this  ex- 
cellent system  in  Lully's  famous  aria  from  Me- 
dusa  to  prove  what  strength  results  from  a  close 
relation  between  the  accent  of  the  verse  and  the 
music.  Gluck  was  one  of  the  most  fervent  dis- 
ciples of  this  system,  but  Orphee,  as  we  know, 
was  derived  from  Orfeo.  The  question  was 
whether  he  could  even  think  of  suppressing  this 
spectacular  chorus  with  its  amazing  strength 
which  was  one  of  the  principal  reasons  for  the 
work's  success.  Unfortunately  the  music  of  the 
chorus  was  moulded  on  the  Italian  text,  and  each 
verse  ended  with  the  accent  on  the  antepenult, 
which  occurs  frequently  in  German  and  Italian, 
but  never  in  French.  And  they  sing: 

Quel  est  I'atufacieux 
Qui  dans  ces  so/rebres  lieux 
Ose  porter  ses  pas 
Et  devant  le  trepas 
Ne  fremit  pas? 

Ss  French  is  not  strongly  accented  sucli  faults 
are  tolerated.  Gluck's  theme  impressed  itself 
on  the  memory,  so  that  he  dealt  a  terrific  blow 

176 


ORPHEE 

to  the  purity  of  prosody.  We  gradually  became 
so  disinterested  in  this  that  hy  Auber's  time 
scarcely  any  attention  was  paid  to  it.  Finally, 
Offenbach  appeared.  He  was  a  German  by  birth 
and  his  musical  ideas  naturally  rhymed  with  Ger- 
man in  direct  contradiction  to  the  French  words 
to  which  they  applied.  This  constant  bungling 
passed  for  originality.  Sometimes  it  would  have 
been  necessary  to  change  the  division  of  a  meas- 
ure to  get  a  correct  melody,  as  in  the  song: 

Un  p'tit  bonhomme 
Pas  plus  haut  qu'ga. 

In  such  a  case  we  might  say  that  he  did  wrong 
for  the  mere  pleasure  of  going  astray.  But  pop- 
ular taste  was  so  corrupted  that  no  one  noticed  it 
and  everybody  who  wrote  in  the  lighter  vein  fell 
into  the  same  habits. 

We  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Andre  Messager 
for  breaking  away  from  this  manner  and  setting 
musical  phraseology  aright.  His  return  to  the 
old  traditions  was  not  the  least  of  the  attractions 
of  his  delightful  Veronique. 

177 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

But  we  are  wandering  far  from  Gluck  and  Or- 
phee,  although  not  so  far  as  we  might  think.  In 
art,  as  in  everything,  extremes  meet,  and  there 
are  all  kinds  of  tastes. 


178 


CHAPTER  XVI 

DELSARTE 

Felix  Duquesnal  in  one  of  his  brilliant  articles 
has  written  something  about  Delsarte,  the  singer, 
in  connection  with  his  controversy  with  Madame 
Carvalho.  The  cause  of  this  controversy  was 
the  lessons  she  took  from  him.  The  name  of 
Delsarte  should  never  be  forgotten,  as  I  shall  try 
to  explain.  Madame  Carvalho  did  not  refuse  to 
pay  Delsarte  for  her  lessons,  but  she  did  not  want 
to  be  called  his  pupil.  Although  she  had  at- 
tended the  Conservatoire,  she  wanted  to  be 
known  solely  as  a  pupil  of  Duprez.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  it  was  Duprez  who  knew  how  to  make  the 
"Little  Miolan,"  the  delightful  warbler,  into  the 
great  singer  with  her  important  place  on  the 
French  stage. 

But  this  was  accomplished  at  a  price.  Ma- 
dame Carvalho  told  me  about  it  herself.  Her 

179 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

medium  register  was  weak  and  Duprez  undertook 
to  substitute  chest  tones  and  develop  clearness  as 
much  as  possible.  "When  I  began  to  work,"  she 
said,  "my  mother  was  frightened.  One  would 
have  thought  that  a  calf  was  being  killed  in  the 
house." 

Ordinarily  such  a  method  would  produee  a 
harsh,  shaky  voice  and  all  freshness  would  be 
lost.  But  in  Madame  Carvalho's  case  the  op- 
posite was  true.  The  freshness  and  purity  of 
her  voice  were  beyond  compare,  while  its  smooth- 
ness and  the  harmony  of  the  registers  were  per- 
fect. It  was  a  miracle  the  like  of  which  we  shall 
probably  never  see  again. 

But  if  Duprez  made  a  wonderful  voice  at  the 
risk  of  breaking  it,  I  have  always  thought  that 
Madame  Carvalho  owed  her  admirable  diction,  so 
distinguishing  a  mark  of  her  talent,  to  Delsarte. 
Delsarte  was  a  disastrous  and  deadly  teacher  of 
singing.  No  voice  could  stand  up  under  his 
methods,  not  even  his  own,  although  he  attrib- 
uted its  loss  to  teaching  at  the  Conservatoire. 
But  he  studied  deeply  the  arts  of  speaking  and 
gesture,  and  he  was  a  past  master  in  them. 

180 


DELSARTE 

I  once  attended  a  course  he  gave  in  these  sub- 
jects. He  stated  highly  illuminating  truths  and 
gave  the  psychological  reasons  for  accents  and 
the  physiological  reasons  for  the  gestures.  He 
determined  the  use  of  gestures  in  some  sort  of 
scientific  way.  Mystic  fancies  were  mixed  up  in 
these  questions. 

It  was  extremely  interesting  to  see  him  dissect 
one  of  Fontaine's  fables  or  a  passage  from  Ra- 
cine, and  to  hear  him  explain  why  the  accent 
should  be  on  such  a  word  or  on  such  a  syllable 
and  not  on  another,  to  bring  out  the  sense.  Al- 
though this  course  was  so  instructive,  few  took  it, 
for  Delsarte  was  almost  unknown  to  people.  His 
influence  scarcely  extended  outside  a  narrow  cir- 
cle of  admirers,  but  the  quality  made  up  for  the 
quantity.  This  was  the  circle  of  the  old  Debats, 
which  was  formerly  devoted  exclusively  to  Ro- 
manticism, but  at  this  time  to  the  classics — the 
set  headed  by  Ingres  in  painting  and  Reber  in 
music.  Theirs  was  a  secluded  and  ascetic  world 
in  silent  revolt  against  the  abominations  of  the 
century.  One  had  to  hear  the  tone  of  devotion 
in  which  the  members  of  this  circle  spoke  of  the 

181 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ancients  to  appreciate  their  attitude.  Nothing  in 
our  day  can  give  any  idea  of  them.  "They  say," 
one  of  the  devotees  once  told  me,  "that  the  an- 
cients learned  Beauty  through  a  sort  of  revela- 
tion, and  Beauty  has  steadily  degenerated  ever 
since." 

Such  false  notions  were,  however,  professed  by 
the  most  sincere  people  who  were  deeply  devoted 
to  art.  So  this  group,  which  had  no  influence  on 
their  own  contemporaries,  nevertheless,  without 
knowing  it  or  wishing  to  do  so,  played  a  useful 
role. 

As  we  know,  the  public  was  divided  into  two 
camps.  On  one  side  were  the  partisans  of  Mel- 
ody, opera-comique,  the  Italians,  and,  with  some 
effort,  of  grand  opera.  Opposed  to  them  were 
the  partisans  of  music  in  the  grand  style — Bee- 
thoven, Mozart,  Haydn,  and  Sebastian  Bach,  al- 
though he  was  little  known  and  is  less  well  known 
now. 

No  one  gave  a  thought  to  our  old  French 
school,  to  the  composers  from  Lulli  to  Gluck,  who 
produced  so  many  excellent  works.  Reber 
showed  Delsarte  the  way  and  the  latter,  naturally 

182 


DELSARTE 

an  antiquarian,  threw  himself  into  this  unex- 
plored field  with  surprising  vigor.  Only  Lulli's 
name  was  known,  while  Campra,  Mondonville 
and  the  others  were  entirely  forgotten.  Even 
Gluck  himself  had  been  forgotten.  First  edi- 
tions of  his  orchestral  scores,  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  find  to-day,  sold  for  a  few  francs  at  the 
second-hand  book  shops.  Rameau  was  never 
mentioned. 

Delsarte,  handsome,  eloquent,  and  fascinat- 
ing, wielded  an  almost  imperial  sway  over  his  lit- 
tle coterie  of  artists.  Thanks  to  him  the  lamp  of 
our  old  French  school  was  kept  dimly  burning 
until  the  day  when  inherent  justice  permitted  it 
to  be  revived.  In  this  restricted  world  no  even- 
ing was  complete  without  Delsarte.  He  would 
come  in  with  some  story  of  frightful  throat 
trouble  to  justify  his  chronic  lack  of  voice,  and, 
then,  without  any  voice  at  all  but  by  a  kind  of 
magic,  would  put  shudders  into  the  tones  of  Or- 
pheus or  Eurydice.  I  often  played  his  accom- 
paniments and  he  always  demanded  pianissimo. 

"But,"  I  would  say,  "the  author  has  indicated 
forte." 

183 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

"That  is  true,"  he  would  answer,  "but  in  those 
days  the  harpsichord  had  little  depth  of  tone." 

It  would  have  been  easy  to  answer  that  the  ac- 
companiment was  written  for  the  orchestra  and 
not  for  the  harpsichord. 

Delsarte's  execution,  on  account  of  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  his  vocal  powers,  was  often  entirely  dif- 
ferent from  what  the  author  intended.  Further- 
more, he  was  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  correct 
way  to  interpret  the  appogiatures  and  other 
marks  which  are  not  used  to-day.  As  a  result  his 
interpretation  of  the  older  works  was  inexact. 
But  that  did  not  matter,  for  even  if  masterpieces 
are  presented  badly,  there  is  always  something 
left.  Besides,  both  the  singer  and  his  hearers 
had  Faith.  He  had  a  way  of  pronouncing 
"Gluck"  which  aroused  expectation  even  before 
one  heard  a  note. 

From  time  to  time  Delsarte  gave  a  concert. 
He  would  come  on  the  stage  and  say  that  he  had 
a  bad  throat,  but  that  he  would  try  to  give  Iphige- 
nia's  Dream  or  something  of  that  sort.  His 
courage  would  prove  to  be  greater  than  his 
strength  and  he  would  have  to  stop.  He  would 

184 


DELSARTE 

then  fall  back  on  old-time  songs  or  La  Fontaine's 
fables  in  which  he  excelled.  A  skilfully  studied 
mimicry,  which  seemed  entirely  natural,  under- 
lay his  reading.  A  red  handkerchief,  which  he 
knew  how  to  draw  from  his  pocket  at  just  the 
proper  moment,  always  excited  applause. 

One  day  he  conceived  the  idea  of  giving  one  of 
Bossuet's  sermons  at  his  concert.  Religious 
authority  was  very  powerful  at  the  time  and  for- 
bade it.  Yet  there  would  have  been  no  sacrilege, 
and  I  regretted  keenly  that  I  could  not  hear  this 
magnificent  prose  delivered  so  wonderfully. 
Now  that  religious  authority  has  lost  its  secular 
support,  we  see  things  in  an  entirely  different 
way.  Christ,  the  Virgin,  and  the  Saints  walk  the 
stage,  speak  in  prose  or  verse,  and  sing.  It 
would  seem  that  no  one  is  shocked  for  there  is  no 
protest.  For  my  own  part  I  must  frankly  con- 
fess that  such  pseudo-religious  exhibitions  are 
disagreeable.  They  disturb  me  greatly  and  I 
can  see  no  use  in  them. 

In  order  to  foster  admiration  for  the  old  mas- 
ters, Delsarte  conceived  the  idea  of  publishing  a 

185 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

collection  of  pieces  taken  from  their  works  right 
and  left,  and,  as  a  result,  he  created  his  Archives 
du  Chant.  He  had  special  type  made  and  the 
publication  was  a  marvel  of  beautiful  typogra- 
phy, correctness  and  good  taste.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  each  part  was  a  cleverly  harmonised  pas- 
sage of  church  music.  The  support  of  a  pub- 
lisher was  necessary  for  the  success  of  such  a 
work,  but  Delsarte  was  his  own  publisher  and  he 
met  with  no  success  at  all.  Similar  but  inferior 
publications  have  been  markedly  successful. 

Delsarte  aimed  at  purity  of  text,  but  his  suc- 
cessors have  been  forced  to  modernize  the  works 
to  make  them  accessible  for  the  public.  This 
fact  is  painful.  In  literature  the  texts  are  stud- 
ied and  the  endeavor  is  to  reproduce  the  writer's 
thought  as  closely  as  possible.  In  music  it  is 
entirely  different.  With  each  new  edition  a 
professor  is  commissioned  to  supervise  the  work 
and  he  adds  something  of  his  own  invention. 

Delsarte,  a  singer  without  a  voice,  an  imper- 
fect musician,  a  doubtful  scholar,  guided  by  an 
intuition  which  approached  genius,  in  spite  of  his 
numerous  faults  played  an  important  role  in  the 

186 


DELSARTE 

evolution  of  French  music  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury. He  was  no  ordinary  man.  The  impres- 
sion he  gave  to  all  who  knew  him  was  of  a  vision- 
ary, an  apostle.  When  one  heard  him  speak 
with  his  fiery  enthusiasm  about  these  works  of 
the  past  which  the  world  had  forgotten,  one  could 
but  believe  that  such  oblivion  was  unjust  and  de- 
sire to  know  these  relics  of  another  age. 

Without  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  I  owed  to  his 
leadership  the  necessary  courage  to  make  a  pro- 
found study  of  the  works  of  the  old  school,  for 
they  are  unattractive  at  first.  Berlioz  berated 
all  this  music.  He  had  seen  Gluck's  works  on 
the  stage  in  his  youth,  but  he  could  see  nothing 
in  them  that  was  not  "superannuated  and  child- 
ish." With  all  respect  to  Berlioz's  memory,  it 
deserved  a  kinder  judgment  than  that.  When 
one  reaches  the  depths  of  this  music,  although  it 
may  be  at  the  price  of  some  effort,  he  is  well  re- 
paid for  his  pains.  There  is  real  feeling,  gran- 
deur and  even  something  of  the  picturesque  in 
these  works — as  much  as  could  be  with  the 
means  at  their  disposal. 

It  is  only  right  that  we  should  pay  tribute  to 
187 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Delsarte's  memory.  He  was  a  pioneer  who,  dur- 
ing his  whole  life,  proclaimed  the  value  of  im- 
mortal works,  which  the  world  despised.  That 
is  no  slight  merit. 


188 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SEGHERS 

While  Delsarte  was  preparing  the  way  for  the 
old  French  opera  and  above  all  for  Gluck's  works, 
another  pioneer  of  musical  evolution  was  work- 
ing to  form  the  taste  of  the  Parisian  public,  but 
with  an  entirely  different  power  and  another 
effect.  Seghers  was  the  man.  He  played  a 
great  role  and  his  memory  should  be  honored. 

As  his  name  indicates,  Seghers  was  a  Belgian. 
He  started  life  as  a  violinist  and  was  one  of  Bail- 
lot's  pupils.  His  execution  was  masterly,  his 
tone  admirable,  and  he  had  a  musical  intelligence 
of  the  first  order.  He  had  every  right  to  a  first 
rank  among  virtuosi,  but  this  man,  herculean  in 
appearance  and  tenacious  in  his  purposes,  lost  all 
his  power  before  an  audience. 

He  had  a  dream  of  giving  to  lovers  of  music 
the  last  of  Beethoven's  quartets,  which  were  con- 
sidered at  the  time  both  unplayable  and  incom- 

189 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

prehensible.  In  the  end  he  planned  a  series  of 
concerts  at  which,  despite  my  age — I  was  only 
fifteen — I  was  to  be  the  regular  pianist.  He 
planned  to  give  in  addition  to  these  quartets, 
some  of  Bach's  sonatas  and  Reber's  and  Schu- 
mann's trios.  I  spoke  of  this  plan  to  his  mother- 
in-law  one  day  as  she  was  peacefully  embroider- 
ing at  the  window,  and  told  her  how  pleased  I 
was  at  the  thought  of  the  concerts. 

"Don't  count  on  it  too  much,"  she  told  me. 
"He'll  never  give  them." 

When  everything  was  ready,  he  invited  some 
thirty  people  to  listen  to  a  trial  performance.  It 
was  wretched.  All  the  depth  of  tone  had  gone 
from  his  violin  as  well  as  the  skill  from  his  fin- 
gers. .  .  .  The  project  was  abandoned. 

It  was  left  for  Maurin  to  make  something  out 
of  these  terrible  quartets.  Maurin  had  peculiar 
gifts.  He  had  a  lightness  of  bow  which  I  have 
never  seen  equalled  by  anyone  and  a  lightness 
and  charm  which  enchanted  the  public.  But  I 
can  say  in  all  sincerity  that  Seghers's  execution 
was  even  better.  Unfortunately  for  him  I  was 
his  only  listener. 

190 


SEGHERS 

Madame  Seghers  was  a  woman  of  great  beauty, 
unusually  intelligent  and  distinguished.  She 
had  been  one  of  Liszt's  pupils  and  was  a  pianist 
of  first  rank.  But  she  was  even  more  timid  than 
her  husband — a  single  listener  was  sufficient  to 
paralyze  her.  When  Liszt  was  teaching  Madame 
Seghers,  he  came  to  appreciate  her  husband's 
real  worth  and  entrusted  his  daughter's  musical 
education  to  him.  This  is  sufficient  indication 
of  the  esteem  in  which  Liszt  held  Seghers.  So  it 
was  not  surprising  that  he  gave  me  valuable  and 
greatly  needed  suggestions  in  regard  to  style  and 
the  piano  itself,  for  his  friendship  with  Liszt  had 
given  him  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  in- 
strument. 

I  first  saw  and  heard  Liszt  at  Seghers's  house. 
He  had  reappeared  in  Paris  after  long  years  of 
absence,  and  by  that  time  he  had  begun  to  seem 
almost  legendary.  The  story  went  that  since  he 
had  become  chapel-master  at  Weimar  he  was  de- 
voting himself  to  grand  compositions,  and,  what 
appeared  unbelievable,  "piano  music."  People 
who  ought  to  have  known  that  Mozart  was  the 
greatest  pianist  of  his  time  shrugged  their  shoul- 

191 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

ders  at  this.  As  a  climax  it  was  insinuated  that 
Liszt  was  setting  systems  of  philosophy  to  music. 
I  studied  Liszt's  works  with  all  the  enthusiasm 
of  my  eighteen  years  for  I  already  regarded  him 
as  a  genius  and  attributed  to  him  even  before  I 
saw  him  almost  superhuman  powers  as  a  pianist. 
Remarkable  to  relate  he  surpassed  the  conception 
I  had  formed.  The  dreams  of  my  youthful  imag- 
ination were  but  prose  in  comparison  with  the 
Bacchic  hymn  evoked  by  his  supernatural  fingers. 
No  one  who  did  not  hear  him  at  the  height  of  his 
powers  can  have  any  idea  of  his  performance. 

Seghers  was  a  member  of  the  Societe  des  Con- 
certs at  the  Conservatoire.  This  reached  only  a 
restricted  public  and  there  was  no  other  sym- 
phony concert  worthy  of  the  name  in  Paris  at  the 
time.  And  if  the  public  was  limited,  the  reper- 
toire was  even  more  so.  Haydn's,  Mozart's  and 
Beethoven's  symphonies  were  played  almost  ex- 
clusively, and  Mendelssohn's  were  introduced 
with  the  greatest  difficulty.  Only  fragments  of 
vast  compositions  like  the  oratorios  were  given. 
An  author  who  was  still  alive  was  looked  upon 

192 


SEGHERS 

as  an  intruder.  However,  the  conductor  was  per- 
mitted to  introduce  a  solo  of  his  own  selection. 
Thus  my  friend  Auguste  Tolbecque,  who  was 
over  eighty,  was  permitted  to  give — he  still 
played  beautifully — my  first  concerto  for  the  vio- 
loncello which  I  had  written  for  him.  Deldevez, 
the  conductor  of  the  famous  orchestra  at  the  time, 
did  not  overlook  the  chance  to  tell  me  that  he 
had  put  my  concerto  on  the  programme  only 
through  consideration  for  Tolbecque.  Other- 
wise, he  added,  he  would  have  preferred  Mes- 
sieurs So-and-so's. 

Not  only  did  the  Conservatoire  audiences  know 
little  music,  but  the  larger  public  knew  none  at 
all.  The  symphonies  of  the  three  great  classic 
masters  were  known  to  amateurs  for  the  most  part 
only  through  Czerny's  arrangement  for  two  pi- 
anos. 

This  was  the  situation  when  Seghers  left  the 
Societe  des  Concerts  and  founded  the  Societe  St. 
Cecile.  He  led  the  orchestra  himself.  The 
new  society  took  its  name  from  the  St.  Cecile  hall 
which  was  then  in  the  Rue  de  la  Chaussee  d'An- 
tin.  It  was  a  large  square  hall  and  was  excellent 

193 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

in  spite  of  the  prejudice  in  favor  of  halls  with 
curved  lines  for  music.  Curved  surfaces,  as  Ca- 
vaille-Coll,  who  was  an  expert  in  this  matter, 
once  told  me,  distort  sound  as  curved  mirrors  dis- 
tort images.  Halls  used  for  music  should,  there- 
fore, have  only  straight  lines.  The  St.  Cecile 
hall  was  sufficiently  large  to  allow  a  complete  or- 
chestra and  chorus  to  be  placed  properly  and 
heard  as  well. 

Seghers  managed  to  assemble  an  excellent  and 
sizable  orchestra  and  he  also  secured  soloists  who 
were  young  then  but  who  have  since  become 
celebrities.  The  orchestra  was  poorly  paid  and 
also  very  unruly.  I  have  seen  them  rebel  at  the 
difficulties  in  Beethoven,  and  it  was  even  worse 
when  Seghers  undertook  to  give  Schumann  who 
was  considered  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  modernism. 
Oftentimes  there  were  real  riots.  But  we  heard 
there  for  the  first  time  the  overture  of  Manfred, 
Mendelssohn's  Symphony  in  A  minor,  and  the 
overture  to  Tannhauser. 

The  modern  French  school  found  the  doors  in 
the  Rue  Bergere  closed  to  them,  but  they  were 
welcomed  with  open  arms  at  the  Chaussee  d'An- 

194 


SEGHERS 

tin.  Among  them  were  Reber,  Gounod,  and 
Gouvy,  and  even  beginners  like  Georges  Bizet 
and  myself.  I  made  my  first  venture  there  with 
my  Symphony  in  E  flat  which  I  wrote  when  I 
was  seventeen.  In  order  to  get  the  committee  to 
adopt  it,  Seghers  offered  it  as  a  symphony  by  an 
unknown  author,  which  had  been  sent  to  him 
from  Germany.  The  committees  swallowed  the 
bait,  and  the  symphony,  which  would  probably 
not  had  a  hearing  if  my  name  had  been  signed, 
was  praised  to  the  skies. 

I  can  still  see  myself  at  a  rehearsal  listening  to 
a  conversation  between  Berlioz  and  Gounod. 
Both  of  them  were  greatly  interested  in  me,  so 
that  they  spoke  freely  and  discussed  the  excel- 
lences and  faults  of  this  anonymous  symphony. 
They  took  the  work  seriously  and  it  can  be  imag- 
ined how  I  drank  in  their  words.  When  the  veil 
of  mystery  was  lifted,  the  interest  of  the  two  great 
musicians  changed  to  friendship.  I  received  a 
letter  from  Gounod,  which  I  have  kept  carefully, 
and  as  it  does  credit  to  the  author,  I  take  the  lib- 
erty of  reproducing  it  here: 

195 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

My  dear  Camille: 

I  was  officially  informed  yesterday  that  you  are 
the  author  of  the  symphony  which  they  played 
on  Sunday.  I  suspected  it;  but  now  that  I  am 
sure,  I  want  to  tell  you  at  once  how  pleased  I 
was  with  it.  You  are  beyond  your  years ;  always 
keep  on — and  remember  that  on  Sunday,  Decem- 
ber 11,  1853,  you  obligated  yourself  to  become 
a  great  master. 

Your  pleased  and  devoted  friend, 

CH.  GOUNOD. 

Many  works  which  had  been  unknown  to 
Parisian  audiences  were  given  at  these  concerts 
and  nowhere  else.  Among  them  were  Schu- 
bert's Symphony  in  C,  fragments  of  Weber's 
opera  Preciosa,  his  Jubel  overture,  and  symphon- 
ies by  Gade,  Gouvy,  Gounod,  and  Reber.  These 
symphonies  are  not  dazzling  but  they  are  charm- 
ing. They  form  an  interesting  link  in  the  golden 
chain,  and  the  public  has  a  right  and  even  some 
sort  of  duty  to  hear  them.  They  would  enjoy 
hearing  them  too,  just  as  at  the  Louvre  they  like 
to  see  certain  pictures  which  are  not  extraor- 
dinary but  which  are,  nevertheless,  worthy  of  the 

196 


SEGHERS 

place  they  occupy.  That  is  to  say,  if  the  public 
is  really  guided  by  a  love  of  art  and  seeks  only  in- 
tellectual pleasure  instead  of  sensations  and 
shocks.  Some  one  has  said  lately  that  where 
there  is  no  feeling  there  is  no  music.  We  could, 
however,  cite  many  passages  of  music  which  are 
absolutely  lacking  in  emotion  and  which  are  beau- 
tiful nevertheless  from  the  standpoint  of  pure 
esthetic  beauty.  But  what  am  I  saying?  Paint- 
ing goes  its  own  way  and  emotion,  feeling,  and 
passion  are  evoked  by  the  least  landscape. 
Maurice  Barres  brought  in  this  fashion  and  he 
could  even  see  passion  in  rocks.  Happy  is  he 
who  can  follow  him  there. 

Among  the  things  we  heard  at  that  time  and 
which  we  never  hear  now  I  must  note  especially 
Berlioz's  Corsaire  and  King  Lear.  His  name  is 
so  much  beloved  by  the  present  day  public  that 
this  neglect  is  both  unjust  and  unjustifiable. 
The  great  man  himself  came  to  the  Societe  St. 
Cecile  one  day  to  conduct  his  UEnfance  du 
Christ  which  he  had  just  written — or  rather  La 
Fuite  en  Egypt  which  was  the  only  part  of  the 
work  that  was  in  existence  then.  He  composed 

197 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  rest  of  it  afterwards.  I  remember  perfectly 
the  performances  which  the  great  man  directed. 
They  were  lively  and  spirited  rather  than  careful, 
but  somewhat  slower  than  what  Edouard  Colonne 
has  accustomed  us  to.  The  time  was  faster  and 
the  nuances  sharper. 

In  spite  of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  conductor 
and  the  skill  and  talent  of  the  orchestra,  the  so- 
ciety led  a  hand-to-mouth  existence.  The  sinews 
of  war  were  lacking.  Weckerlin  directed  the 
choruses  and  I  acted  as  the  accompanist  at  the 
rehearsals.  Love  of  art  sufficed  us,  but  the  sing- 
ers and  instrumentalists  were  not  satisfied  with 
that  in  the  absence  of  all  emoluments.  If 
Seghers  had  been  adaptable,  he  might  have  se- 
cured resources,  but  that  was  not  his  forte. 
Meyerbeer  wanted  him  to  give  his  Struensee  and 
Halevy  wanted  a  performance  of  his  Promethee. 
But  this  was  contrary  to  Seghers's  convictions, 
and  when  he  had  once  made  up  his  mind  nothing 
could  change  him.  Nevertheless  he  did  give  the 
overture  to  Struensee  and  it  would  have  been  no 
great  effort  to  give  the  rest.  As  to  Promethee, 
even  if  the  last  part  is  not  in  harmony  with  the 

198 


SEGHERS 

rest  of  it,  the  work  was  well  worthy  the  honor  of  a 
performance,  which  the  proud  society  in  the  Rue 
Bergere  had  accorded  it.  By  these  refusals 
Seghers  was  deprived  of  the  support  of  two 
powerful  protectors. 

Pasdeloup  craftily  took  advantage  of  the  situa- 
tion. He  had  plenty  of  money  and,  as  he  knew 
what  the  financial  situation  was,  he  went  to  the 
rehearsals  and  corrupted  the  artists.  For  the 
most  part  they  were  young  people  in  needy  cir- 
cumstances and  could  not  refuse  his  attractive 
propositions.  He  killed  Seghers's  society  and 
built  on  its  ruins  the  Societe  des  Jeunes  Artistes, 
which  later  became  the  Concerts  Populaires. 

Pasdeloup  was  sincerely  fond  of  music  but  he 
was  a  very  ordinary  musician.  He  had  little  of 
Seghers's  feeling  and  profound  comprehension 
of  the  art.  In  Seghers's  hands  the  popular  con- 
certs would  have  become  an  admirable  undertak- 
ing, but  Pasdeloup,  in  spite  of  his  zeal  and  skill, 
was  able  to  give  them  only  a  superficial  and  de- 
ceptive brilliancy.  Besides,  Seghers  would  have 
worked  for  the  development  of  the  French  school 
whom  Pasdeloup,  with  but  few  exceptions,  kept 

199 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

under  a  bushel  until  1870.  Among  tHese  ex- 
ceptions were  a  symphony  by  Gounod,  one  by 
Gouvy  and  the  overture  to  Berlioz's  Frances- 
Juges. 

Until  the  misfortunes  and  calamities  of  that 
terrible  year  the  French  symphonic  school  had 
been  repressed  and  stifled  between  the  Societe  des 
Concerts  and  the  Concerts  Populaires.  Perhaps 
they  were  necessary  so  that  this  school  might  be 
freed  and  give  flight  to  its  fancies. 


200 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

ROSSINI 

Nowadays  it  is  difficult  to  form  any  idea  of 
Rossini's  position  in  our  beautiful  city  of  Paris 
half  a  century  ago.  He  had  retired  from  active 
life  a  long  time  before,  but  he  had  a  greater  repu- 
tation in  his  idleness  than  many  others  in  their 
activity.  All  Paris  sought  the  honor  of  being  ad- 
mitted to  his  magnificent,  high-windowed  apart- 
ment. As  the  demigod  never  went  out  in  the 
evening,  his  friends  were  always  sure  of  finding 
him  at  home.  At  one  time  or  another  all  sorts 
of  social  sets  rubbed  elbows  at  his  great  soirees. 
The  most  brilliant  singers  and  the  most  famous 
virtuosi  appeared  at  these  "evenings."  The 
master  was  surrounded  by  sycophants,  but  they 
did  not  influence  him,  for  he  knew  their  true 
worth.  He  ruled  his  regular  following  with  the 
hauteur  of  a  superior  being  who  does  not  deign  to 

201 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

reveal  himself  to  the  first  comer.  It  is  a  question 
how  he  came  to  be  held  in  such  honor. 

His  works,  outside  of  the  Barbier  and  Guil- 
laume  Tell,  and  some  performances  of  Mo'ise,  be- 
longed to  the  past.  They  still  went  to  see  Otello 
at  the  Theatre-Italien,  but  that  was  to  hear  Tam- 
berlick's  C  diesis.  Rossini  was  under  so  little 
illusion  that  he  tried  to  oppose  the  effort  to  have 
Semiramide  put  into  the  repertoire  at  the  Opera. 
And,  nevertheless,  the  Parisian  public  actually 
worshipped  him. 

This  public — I  am  speaking  now  of  the 
musical  public  or  what  is  called  that — was  di- 
vided into  two  hostile  camps.  There  were  the 
lovers  of  melody  who  were  in  the  large  majority 
and  included  the  musical  critics;  and,  on  the 
other  side,  the  subscribers  to  the  Conservatoire 
and  the  Maurin,  Alard  and  Amingaud  quartets. 
They  were  devotees  of  learned  music;  "poseurs," 
others  said,  who  pretended  to  admire  works  they 
did  not  understand  at  all. 

There  was  no  melody  in  Beethoven ;  some  even 
denied  that  there  was  any  in  Mozart.  Melody 
was  found,  we  were  told,  only  in  the  works  of  the 

202 


ROSSINI 

Italian  school,  of  which  Rossini  was  the  leader, 
and  in  the  school  of  Herold  and  Auber,  which 
was  descended  from  the  Italian. 

The  Melodists  considered  Rossini  their  stand- 
ard bearer,  a  symbol  to  rally  around,  even  though 
they  had  just  obtained  good  prices  for  his  works 
at  the  second-hand  shops  and  now  permitted  them 
to  fall  into  oblivion. 

From  some  words  he  let  fall  during  our  in- 
timacy I  can  state  that  this  neglect  was  painful 
to  him.  But  it  was  a  just — perhaps  too  just — 
retribution  for  the  fatality  with  which  Rossini, 
doubtless  in  spite  of  himself,  served  as  a  weapon 
against  Beethoven.  The  first  encounter  was  at 
Vienna  where  the  success  of  Tancred  crushed 
forever  the  dramatic  ambitions  of  the  author  of 
Fidelio ;  later,  at  Paris,  they  used  Guillaume  Tell 
in  combating  the  increasing  invasion  of  the  sym- 
phony and  chamber  music. 

I  was  twenty  when  M.  and  Mme.  Viardot  in- 
troduced me  to  Rossini.  He  invited  me  to  his 
small  evening  receptions  and  received  me  with 
his  usual  rather  meaningless  cordiality.  At  the 
end  of  a  month,  when  he  found  that  I  asked  to  be 

203 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

heard  neither  as  a  pianist  nor  as  a  composer,  he 
changed  his  attitude.  "Come  and  see  me  to- 
morrow morning,"  he  said.  "We  can  talk 
then." 

I  was  quick  to  respond  to  this  flattering  invi- 
tation and  I  found  a  very  different  Rossini  from 
the  one  of  the  evening.  He  was  intensely  in- 
terested in  and  open-minded  to  ideas,  which,  if 
they  were  not  advanced,  were  at  least  broad  and 
noble.  He  gave  proof  of  this  when  Liszt's  fa- 
mous Messe  was  performed  for  the  first  time  at 
St.  Eustache.  He  went  to  its  defense  in  the  face 
of  an  almost  unanimous  opposition. 

He  said  to  me  one  day, 

"You  have  written  a  duet  for  a  flute  and 
clarinet  for  Dorus  and  Leroy.  Won't  you  ask 
them  to  play  it  at  one  of  my  evenings?" 

The  two  great  artists  did  not  have  to  be  urged. 
Then  an  unheard  of  thing  happened.  As  he 
never  had  a  written  programme  on  such  occa- 
sions, Rossini  managed  so  that  they  believed  that 
the  duet  was  his  ewn.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the 
success  of  the  piece  under  these  conditions. 
When  the  encore  was  over,  Rossini  took  me  to 

204 


ROSSINI 

the  dining-room  and  made  me  sit  near  him,  hold- 
ing me  by  the  hand  so  that  I  could  not  get  away. 
A  procession  of  fawning  admirers  passed  in  front 
of  him.  Ah!  Master!  What  a  masterpiece! 
Marvellous ! 

And  when  the  victim  had  exhausted  the  re- 
sources of  the  language  in  praise,  Rossini  replied, 
quietly: 

"I  agree  with  you.  But  the  duet  wasn't  mine ; 
it  was  written  by  this  gentleman." 

Such  kindness  combined  with  such  ingenuity 
tells  more  about  the  great  man  than  many  vol- 
umes of  commentaries.  For  Rossini  was  a  great 
man.  The  young  people  of  to-day  are  in  no  po- 
sition to  judge  his  works,  which  were  written,  as 
he  said  himself,  for  singers  and  a  public  who  no 
longer  exist. 

"I  am  criticised,"  he  said  one  day,  "for  the 
great  crescendo  in  my  works.  But  if  I  hadn't  put 
the  crescendo  into  my  works,  they  would  never 
have  been  played  at  the  Opera." 

In  our  day  the  public  are  slaves.  I  have  read 
in  the  programme  of  one  house,  "All  marks  of 
approbation  will  be  severely  repressed."  For- 

205 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

merly,  especially  in  Italy,  the  public  was  master 
and  its  taste  law.  As  it  came  before  the  lights 
were  up,  a  great  overture  with  a  crescendo  was 
as  necessary  as  cavatinas,  duets  and  ensembles: 
they  came  to  hear  the  singers  and  not  to  be  pres- 
ent at  an  opera.  In  many  of  his  works,  espe- 
cially in  Otello,  Rossini  made  a  great  step  for- 
ward towards  realism  in  opera.  In  Mo'ise  and 
Le  Siege  de  Corinthe  (not  to  mention  Guillaume 
Tell)  he  rose  to  heights  which  have  not  been  sur- 
passed in  spite  of  the  poverty  of  the  means  at  his 
disposal.  As  Victor  Hugo  has  victoriously 
demonstrated,  such  poverty  is  no  obstacle  to 
genius  and  wealth  in  them  is  only  an  advantage  to 
mediocrity. 

I  was  one  of  the  regular  pianists  at  Rossini's. 
The  others  were  Stanzieri,  a  charming  young  man 
of  whom  Rossini  was  very  fond  and  who  lived 
but  a  short  time,  and  Diemer,  who  was  also  young 
!but  already  a  great  artist.  One  or  the  other  of 
us  would  often  play  at  the  evening  entertain- 
ments the  slight  pieces  for  the  piano  which  the 
Master  used  to  write  to  take  up  his  time.  I  was 
only  too  willing  to  accompany  the  singers,  when 

206 


Mme.  Patti 


ROSSINI 

Rossini  did  not  do  so  himself.  He  accompanied 
them  admirably  for  he  played  the  piano  to  per- 
fection. 

Unfortunately  I  was  not  there  the  evening  that 
Patti  sang  for  Rossini  the  first  time.  We  know 
that  after  she  had  sung  the  aria  from  Le  Barbier, 
he  said  to  her,  after  the  usual  compliments, 

"Who  wrote  that  aria  you  just  sang?" 

I  saw  him  three  days  afterwards  and  he  hadn't 
cooled  off  even  then. 

"I  am  fully  aware,"  he  said,  "that  arias  should 
be  embellished.  That's  what  they  are  for. 
But  not  to  leave  a  note  of  them  even  in  the  reci- 
tatives !  That  is  too  much !" 

In  his  irritation  he  complained  that  the  so- 
pranos persisted  in  singing  this  aria  which  was 
written  for  a  contralto  and  did  not  sing  what  had 
been  written  for  the  sopranos  at  all. 

On  the  other  hand  the  diva  was  irritated  as 
well.  She  thought  the  matter  over  and  realized 
that  it  would  be  serious  to  have  Rossini  for  an 
enemy.  So  some  days  later  she  went  to  ask  his 
advice.  It  was  well  for  her  that  she  took  it,  for 
her  talent,  though  brilliant  and  fascinating,  was 

207 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

o 

not  as  yet  fully  formed.  Two  months  after  this 
incident,  Patti  sang  the  arias  from  La  Gaza  Ladra 
and  Semiramide,  with  the  master  as  her  accom- 
panist. And  she  combined  with  her  brilliancy 
the  absolute  correctness  which  she  always  showed 
afterwards. 

Much  has  been  written  about  the  premature 
interruption  of  Rossini's  career  after  the  appear- 
ance of  Guillaume  Tell.  It  has  been  compared 
with  Racine's  life  after  Phedre.  The  failure  of 
Phedre  was  brutal  and  cruel,  which  was  added 
to  by  the  scandalous  success  of  the  Phedre  of  an 
unworthy  rival.  Racine's  friends,  the  Port  Roy- 
alists, did  not  hesitate  to  make  the  most  of  the 
opportunity.  "You've  lost  your  soul,"  they  told 
him.  "And  now  you  haven't  even  success." 
But  later,  when  he  took  up  his  pen  again,  he 
gave  us  two  masterpieces  in  Esther  and  Athalie. 

Rossini  was  accustomed  to  success  and  it  was 
hard  for  him  to  run  into  a  half-hearted  success 
when  he  knew  he  had  surpassed  himse1^  This 
was  doubtless  due  to  the  extravagant  phraseology 
of  Hippolyte  Bis,  one  of  the  librettists.  But 
Guillaume  Tell  had  its  admirers  from  the  start. 

208 


ROSSINI 

I  heard  it  spoken  of  constantly  in  my  childhood. 
If  the  work  did  not  appear  on  the  bills  of  the 
Opera,  it  furnished  the  amateurs  with  choice  bits. 

In  my  opinion,  if  Rossini  committed  suicide  as 
far  as  his  art  was  concerned,  he  did  so  because  he 
had  nothing  more  to  say.  Rossini  was  a  spoiled 
child  of  success  and  he  could  not  live  without  it. 
Such  unexpected  hostility  put  an  end  to  a  stream 
which  had  flowed  so  abundantly  for  so  long. 

The  success  of  his  Soirees  Musicales  and  his 
Stabat  encouraged  him.  But  he  wrote  nothing 
more  except  those  slight  compositions  for  the 
piano  and  for  singing  which  may  be  compared  to 
the  last  vibrations  of  a  sound,  as  it  dies  away. 

Later — much  later — came  La  Messe  to  which 
undue  importance  has  been  attributed.  "Le 
Passus,"  one  critic  wrote,  "is  the  cry  of  a  stricken 
spirit."  La  Messe  is  written  with  elegance  by 
an  assured  and  expert  hand,  but  that  is  all. 
There  are  no  traces  of  the  pen  which  wrote  the 
second  act  of  Guillaume  Tell. 

Apropos  of  this  second  act,  it  is  not,  perhaps, 
generally  known  that  the  author  had  no  idea  of 
ending  it  with  a  prayer.  Insurrections  are  not 

209 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

usually  begun  with  so  serious  a  song.  But  at  the 
rehearsals  the  effect  of  the  unison,  Si  parmi  nous 
il  est  des  Traitres,  was  so  great  that  they  did  not 
dare  to  go  on  beyond  it.  So  they  suppressed  the 
real  ending,  which  is  now  the  brilliant  entrancing 
end  of  the  overture.  This  finale  is  extant  in  the 
library  at  the  Opera.  It  would  be  an  interesting 
experiment  to  restore  it  and  give  this  beautiful 
act  its  natural  conclusion. 


210 


CHAPTER  XIX 

JULES    MASSENET 

Massenet  has  been  praised  indiscriminately — 
sometimes  for  his  numerous  and  brilliant  pow- 
ers and  sometimes  for  merits  he  did  not  have  at 
all. 

I  have  waited  to  speak  of  him  until  the  time 
when  the  Academic  was  ready  to  replace  him, — 
that  is  to  say,  put  some  one  in  his  place,  for 
great  artists  are  never  replaced.  Others  succeed 
them  with  their  own  individual  and  different 
powers,  but  they  do  not  take  their  places  never- 
theless. Malibran  has  never  been  replaced,  nor 
Madame  Viardot,  Madame  Carvalho,  Talma  and 
Rachel.  No  one  can  ever  replace  Patti,  Bartet 
or  Sarah  Bernhardt.  They  could  not  replace 
Ingres,  Delacroix,  Berlioz,  or  Gounod,  and  they 
can  never  replace  Massenet. 

It  is  a  question  whether  he  has  been  accorded 
211 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

his  real  place.  Perhaps  his  pupils  have  esti- 
mated him  at  his  true  worth,  hut  they  were  grate- 
ful for  his  excellent  teaching,  and  may  be  rightly 
suspected  of  partiality.  Others  have  spoken 
slightingly  of  his  works  and  they  have  applied  to 
him  by  transposing  the  words  of  the  celebrated 
dictum:  Saltavit  et  placuit.  He  sang  and 
wept,  so  they  sought  to  deprecate  him  as  if  there 
were  something  reprehensible  in  an  artist's  pleas- 
ing the  public.  This  notion  might  seem  to  have 
some  basis  in  view  of  the  taste  that  is  affected  to- 
day— a  predilection  for  all  that  is  shocking  and 
displeasing  in  all  the  arts,  including  poetry. 
Sorcieres's  epigram — the  ugly  is  beautiful  and 
the  beautiful  ugly — has  become  a  programme. 
People  are  no  longer  content  with  merely  admir- 
ing atrocities,  they  even  speak  with  contempt  of 
beauties  hallowed  by  time  and  the  admiration  of 
centuries. 

The  fact  remains  that  Massenet  is  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  diamonds  in  our  musical  crown. 
No  musician  has  enjoyed  so  much  favor  with  the 
public  save  Auber,  whom  Massenet  did  not  care 
for  any  more  than  he  did  for  his  school,  but  whom 

212 


JULES  MASSENET 

he  resembled  closely.  They  were  alike  in  their 
facility,  their  amazing  fertility,  genius,  graceful- 
ness, and  success.  Both  composed  music  which 
was  agreeable  to  their  contemporaries.  Both 
were  accused  of  pandering  to  their  audiences. 
The  answer  to  this  is  that  both  their  audiences 
and  the  artists  had  the  same  tastes  and  so  were  in 
perfect  accord. 

To-day  the  revolutionists  are  the  only  ones 
held  in  esteem  by  the  critics.  Well,  it  may  be  a 
fine  thing  to  despise  the  mob,  to  struggle  against 
the  current,  and  to  compel  the  mob  by  force  of 
genius  and  energy  to  follow  one  despite  their 
resistance.  Yet  one  may  be  a  great  artist  with- 
out doing  that. 

There  was  nothing  revolutionary  about  Se- 
bastian Bach  with  his  two  hundred  and  fifty  can- 
tatas, which  were  performed  as  fast  as  they  were 
written  and  which  were  constantly  in  demand  for 
important  occasions.  Handel  managed  the  the- 
ater where  his  operas  were  produced  and  his 
oratorios  were  sung,  and  they  would  have  in- 
dubitably failed,  if  he  had  gone  against  the  ac- 
customed taste  of  his  audiences.  Haydn  wrote 

'213 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

to  supply  the  music  for  Prince  Esterhazy's 
chapel;  Mozart  was  forced  to  write  constantly, 
and  Rossini  worked  for  an  intolerant  public 
which  would  not  have  allowed  one  of  his  operas 
to  be  played,  if  the  overture  did  not  contain  the 
great  crescendo  for  which  he  has  been  so  re- 
proached. These  were  none  of  them  revolution- 
ists, yet  they  were  great  musicians. 

Another  criticism  is  made  against  Massenet. 
He  was  superficial,  they  say,  and  lacked  depth. 
Depth,  as  we  know,  is  very  much  the  fashion. 

It  is  true  that  Massenet  was  not  profound,  but 
that  is  of  little  consequence.  Just  as  there  are 
many  mansions  in  our  Father's  house,  so  there 
are  many  in  Apollo's.  Art  is  vast.  The  artist 
has  a  perfect  right  to  descend  to  the  nethermost 
depths  and  to  enter  into  the  inner  secrets  of  the 
soul,  but  this  right  is  not  a  duty. 

The  artists  of  Ancient  Greece,  with  all  their 
marvellous  works,  were  not  profound.  Their 
marble  goddesses  were  beautiful,  and  beauty  was 
sufficient. 

Our  old-time  sculptors — Clodion  and  Coyse- 
vox — were  not  profound;  nor  were  Fragonard, 

214 


JULES  MASSENET 

La  Tour,  nor  Marivaux,  yet  they  brought  honor 
to  the  French  school. 

All  have  their  value  and  all  are  necessary. 
The  rose  with  its  fresh  color  and  its  perfume,  is, 
in  its  way,  as  precious  as  the  sturdy  oak.  Art 
has  a  place  for  artists  of  all  kinds,  and  no  one 
should  flatter  himself  that  he  is  the  only  one  who 
is  capable  of  covering  the  entire  field  of  art. 

Some,  even  in  treating  a  familiar  subject, 
have  as  much  dignity  as  a  Roman  emperor  on  his 
golden  throne,  but  Massenet  did  not  belong  to 
this  type.  He  had  charm,  attraction  and  a  pas- 
sionateness  that  was  feverish  rather  than  deep. 
Hia  melody  was  wavering  and  uncertain,  often- 
times more  a  recitative  than  melody  properly  so 
called,  and  it  was  entirely  his  own.  It  lacks 
structure  and  style.  Yet  how  can  one  resist 
when  he  hears  Manon  at  the  feet  of  Des  Grieux  in 
the  sacristy  of  Saint-Sulpice,  or  help  being  stirred 
to  the  depths  by  such  outpourings  of  love  ?  One 
cannot  reflect  or  analyze  when  moved  in  this  way. 

After  emotional  art  comes  decadent  art.  But 
that  is  of  little  consequence.  Decadence  in  art 
is  often  far  from  being  artistic  deterioration. 

215 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Massenet's  music  has  one  great  attraction  for 
me  and  one  that  is  rare  in  these  days — it  is  gay. 
And  gaiety  is  frowned  upon  in  modern  music. 
They  criticise  Haydn  and  Mozart  for  their  gaiety, 
and  turn  away  their  faces  in  shame  before  the 
exuberant  joyousness  with  which  the  Ninth 
Symphony  comes  to  its  triumphal  close.  Long 
live  gloom.  Hurrah  for  boredom !  So  say  our 
young  people.  They  may  live  to  regret,  too  late, 
the  lost  hours  which  they  might  have  spent  in 
gaiety. 

Massenet's  facility  was  something  prodigious. 
I  have  seen  him  sick  in  bed,  in  a  most  uncom- 
fortable position,  and  still  turning  off  pages  of 
orchestration,  which  followed  one  another  with 
disconcerting  speed.  Too  often  such  facility  en- 
genders laziness,  but  in  his  case  we  know  what 
an  enormous  amount  of  work  he  accomplished. 
He  has  been  criticised  as  being  too  prolific. 
However,  that  is  a  quality  which  belongs  only  to 
a  master.  The  artist  who  produces  little  may,  if 
he  has  ability,  be  an  interesting  artist,  but  he 
will  never  be  a  great  one. 

In  this  time  of  anarchy  in  art,  when  all  he  had 
216 


M.  Jules  Massenet 


- 


JULES  MASSENET 

to  do  to  conciliate  the  hostile  critics  was  to  ar- 
ray himself  with  the  fauves,  Massenet  set  an  ex- 
ample of  impeccable  writing.  He  knew  how  to 
combine  modernism  with  respect  for  tradition, 
and  he  did  this  at  a  time  when  all  he  had  to  do 
was  to  trample  tradition  under  foot  and  be  pro- 
claimed a  genius.  Master  of  his  trade  as  few 
have  ever  been,  alive  to  all  its  difficulties,  pos- 
sessing the  most  subtle  secrets  of  its  technique, 
he  despised  the  contortions  and  exaggerations 
which  simple  minds  confound  with  the  science  of 
music.  He  followed  out  the  course  he  had  set 
for  himself  without  any  concern  for  what  they 
might  say  about  him.  He  was  able  to  adopt 
within  reason  the  novelties  from  abroad  and  he 
was  clever  in  assimilating  them  perfectly,  yet  he 
presented  the  spectacle  of  a  thoroughly  French 
artist  whom  neither  the  Lorelei  of  the  Rhine  nor 
the  sirens  of  the  Mediterranean  could  lead  astray. 
He  was  a  virtuoso  of  the  orchestra,  yet  he  never 
sacrificed  the  voices  for  the  instruments,  nor  did 
he  sacrifice  orchestral  color  for  the  voices. 
Finally,  he  had  the  greatest  gift  of  all,  that  of 
life,  a  gift  which  cannot  be  defined,  but  which 

217 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  public  always  recognizes  and  which  assures 
the  success  of  works  far  inferior  to  his. 

Much  has  been  said  about  the  friendship  be- 
tween us — a  notion  based  solely  on  the  demon- 
strations he  showered  on  me  in  public — and  in 
public  alone.  He  might  have  had  my  friend- 
ship, if  he  had  wanted  it,  and  it  would  have  been 
a  devoted  friendship,  but  he  did  not  want  it. 
He  told — what  I  never  told — how  I  got  one  of 
his  works  presented  at  Weimar,  where  Samson 
had  just  been  given.  What  he  did  not  tell  was 
the  icy  reception  he  gave  me  when  I  brought  the 
news  and  when  I  expected  an  entirely  different 
sort  of  a  reception.  From  that  day  on  I  never 
intervened  again,  and  I  was  content  to  rejoice  in 
his  success  without  expecting  any  reciprocity  on 
his  part,  which  I  knew  to  be  impossible  after  a 
confession  he  made  to  me  one  day.  My  friends 
and  companions  in  arms  were  Bizet,  Guiraud  and 
Delibes ;  Massenet  was  a  rival.  His  high  opinion 
of  me,  therefore,  was  the  more  valuable  when  he 
did  me  the  honor  of  recommending  his  pupils  to 
study  my  works.  I  have  brought  up  this  cfues- 
tion  only  to  make  clear  that  when  I  proclaim  his 

218 


JULES  MASSENET 

great  musical  importance,  I  am  guided  solely  by 
my  artistic  conscience  and  that  my  sincerity  can- 
not be  suspected.  One  word  more.  Massenet 
had  many  imitators;  he  never  imitated  anyone. 


219 


CHAPTER  XX 

\ 

MEYERBEER 
I 

Who  would  have  predicted  that  the  day  would 
come  when  it  would  be  necessary  to  come  to  the 
defense  of  the  author  of  Les  Huguenots  and  Le 
Prophete,  of  the  man  who  at  one  time  dominated 
every  stage  in  Europe  by  a  leadership  which  was 
so  extraordinary  that  it  looked  as  though  it  would 
never  end?  I  could  cite  many  works  in  which 
all  the  composers  of  the  past  are  praised  without 
qualification,  and  Meyerbeer,  alone,  is  accused  of 
numerous  faults.  However,  others  have  faults, 
too,  and,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  but  it  will  stand 
repeating,  it  is  not  the  absence  of  defects  but  the 
presence  of  merits  which  makes  works  and  men 
great.  It  is  not  always  well  to  be  without  blem- 
ish. A  too  regular  face  or  too  pure  a  voice  lacks 
expression.  If  there  is  no  such  thing  as  perfec- 

220 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

tion  in  this  world,  it  is  doubtless  because  it  is  not 
needed. 

As  I  do  not  belong  to  that  biased  school  which 
pretends  to  see  Peter  entirely  white  and  Paul  ut- 
terly black,  I  do  not  try  to  make  myself  think 
that  the  author  of  Les  Huguenots  had  no  faults. 

The  most  serious,  but  the  most  excusable,  is 
his  contempt  for  prosody  and  his  indifference  to 
the  verse  entrusted  to  him.  This  fault  is  ex- 
cusable for  the  French  school  of  the  time,  heed- 
less of  tradition,  set  him  a  bad  example.  Ros- 
sini was,  like  Meyerbeer,  a  foreigner,  but  he  was 
not  affected  in  the  same  way.  He  even  got  fine 
effects  through  the  combination  of  musical  and 
textual  rhythm.  An  instance  of  this  is  seen  in 
the  famous  phrase  in  Guillaume  Tell: 

Ces  jours  qu'ils  ont  ose  proscrire, 
Je  ne  les  ai  pas  defendus. 
Mon  pere,  tu  m'as  du  maudire! 

If  Rossini  had  not  retired  at  an  age  when 
others  are  just  beginning  their  careers  and  had 
given  us  two  or  three  more  works,  his  illustrious 
example  would  have  restored  the  old  principles 

221 


MEYERBEER 

on  which  French  opera  had  been  constructed  from 
the  time  of  Lulli.  On  the  contrary,  Auber  car- 
ried with  him  an  entire  generation  captivated  by 
Italian  music.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  put 
French  words  into  Italian  rhythm.  The  famous 
duet  Amour  sacre  de  la  Patrie  is  versified  as  if 
the  text  were  Amore  sacro  delta  patria.  This  is 
seen  only  in  reading  it,  for  it  is  never  sung  as  it 
is  written. 

Meyerbeer  was,  then,  excusable  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent, but  he  abused  all  indulgence  in  such  mat- 
ters. In  order  to  preserve  intact  his  musical 
forms — even  in  recitatives,  which  are,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  only  declamation  set  to  music — he  ac- 
cented the  weak  syllables  and  vice  versa;  he 
added  words  and  made  unnecessarily  false  verse, 
and  transformed  bad  verse  into  worse  prose. 
He  might  have  avoided  all  these  literary  abom- 
inations without  any  harm  to  the  effect  by  a  slight 
modification  of  the  music.  The  verses  given  to 
musicians  were  often  very  bad,  for  that  was  the 
fashion.  The  versifier  thought  he  had  done  his 
duty  by  his  collaborator  by  giving  him  verses  like 
this: 

222 


MEYERBEER 

i 

Triomphe  que  j  'aime! 
Ta  f rayeur  extreme 
Va  malgre  toi-meme 
Te  livrer  a  moi! 

But  when  Scribe  abandoned  his  reed-pipes  antf 
essayed  the  lyre,  he  gave  Meyerbeer  this, 

J'ai  voulu  les  punir  .  .  .Tu  les  as  surpasses! 

And  Meyerbeer  made  it, 
J'ai  voulu  les  punir  .  .  .  Et  tu  les  as  surpasses! 

which  was  hardly  encouraging. 

Meyerbeer  had  other  manias  as  well.  Per- 
haps the  most  notable  was  to  give  to  the  voice 
musical  schemes  which  belong  by  rights  to  the 
instruments.  So  in  the  first  act  of  Le  Prophete, 
after  the  chorus  sings,  Veille  sur  nous,  instead 
of  stopping  to  breathe  and  prepare  for  the  fol- 
lowing phrase,  he  makes  it  repeat  abruptly,  Sur 
nous!  Sur  nous!  in  unison  with  the  orchestral 
notes  which  are,  to  say  the  least,  a  ritornello. 

Again,  in  the  great  cathedral  scene,  instead  of 
letting  the  orchestra  bring  out  through  the  voices 

223 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

the  musical  expression  of  Fides  sobs:  Et  toi, 
tu  ne  me  connais  pas,  he  puts  both  the  instru- 
ments and  the  voices  in  the  same  time  and  on 
words  which  do  not  harmonize  with  the  music  at 
all. 

I  need  not  speak  of  his  immoderate  love  for 
the  bassoon,  an  admirable  instrument,  but  one 
which  it  is  hardly  prudent  to  abuse. 

But  so  far  we  have  spoken  only  of  trifles. 
Meyerbeer's  music,  as  a  witty  woman  once  re- 
marked to  me,  is  like  stage  scenery — it  should 
not  be  scrutinized  too  closely.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  a  better  characterization.  Meyerbeer  be- 
longed to  the  theater  and  sought  above  every- 
thing else  theatrical  effects.  But  that  does  not 
mean  that  he  was  indifferent  to  details.  He  was 
a  wealthy  man  and  he  used  to  indemnify  the 
theaters  for  the  extra  expense  he  occasioned 
them.  He  multiplied  rehearsals  by  trying  differ- 
ent versions  with  the  orchestra  so  as  to  choose 
between  them.  He  did  not  cast  his  work  in 
bronze,  as  so  many  do,  and  present  it  to  the  pub- 
lic ne  vanetur.  He  was  continually  feeling  his 
way,  recasting,  and  seeking  the  better  which  very 

224 


MEYERBEER 

often  was  the  enemy  of  good.  As  the  result  of 
his  continual  researches  he  too  frequently  turned 
good  ideas  into  inferior  ones.  Note  for  example, 
in  UEtoile  du  Nord,  the  passage,  Enfants  de 
r  Ukraine  fils  du  desert.  The  opening  passage 
is  lofty,  determined  and  picturesque,  but  it  ends 
most  disagreeably. 

He  always  lived  alone  with  no  fixed  place  of 
abode.  He  was  at  Spa  in  the  summer  and  on 
the  Mediterranean  in  the  winter;  in  large  cities 
only  as  business  drew  him.  He  had  no  finan- 
cial worries  and  he  lived  only  to  continue  his 
Penelope-like  work,  which  showed  a  great  love 
of  perfection,  although  he  did  not  find  the  best 
way  of  attaining  it.  They  have  tried  to  place 
this  conscientious  artist  in  the  list  of  seekers  of 
success,  but  such  men  are  not  ordinarily  accus- 
tomed to  work  like  this. 

Since  I  have  used  the  word  artist,  it  is  proper 
to  stop  for  a  moment.  Unlike  Gluck  and  Ber- 
lioz, who  were  greater  artists  than  musicians, 
Meyerbeer  was  more  a  musician  than  an  artist. 
As  a  result,  he  often  used  the  most  refined  and 
learned  means  to  achieve  a  very  ordinary  artistic 

225 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

result.  But  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should 
be  brought  to  task  for  results  which  they  do  not 
even  remark  in  the  works  of  so  many  others. 

Meyerbeer  was  the  undisputed  leader  in  the 
operatic  world  when  Robert  Schumann  struck 
the  first  blow  at  his  supremacy.  Schumann  was 
ignorant  of  the  stage,  although  he  had  made  one 
unfortunate  venture  there.  He  did  not  appre- 
ciate that  there  is  more  than  one  way  to  practise 
the  art  of  music.  But  he  attacked  Meyerbeer, 
violently,  for  his  bad  taste  and  Italian  tendencies, 
entirely  forgetting  that  when  Mozart,  Beethoven, 
and  Weber  did  work  for  the  stage  they  were 
strongly  drawn  towards  Italian  art.  Later,  the 
Wagnerians  wanted  to  oust  Meyerbeer  from  the 
stage  and  make  a  place  for  themselves,  and  they 
got  credit  for  some  of  Schumann's  harsh  criti- 
cisms,— this,  too,  despite  the  fact  that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  skirmish  Schumann  and  the  Wag- 
nerians got  along  about  as  well  as  Ingres  and 
Delacroix  and  their  schools.  But  they  united 
against  the  common  enemy  and  the  French  critics 
followed.  The  critics  entirely  neglected  Ber- 
lioz's opinion,  for,  after  opposing  Meyerbeer  for 

226 


MEYERBEER 

a  long  time,  he  admitted  him  among  the  gods 
and  in  his  Traite  d' Instrumentation  awarded  him 
the  crown  of  immortality. 

Parenthetically,  if  there  is  a  surprising  page 
in  the  history  of  music  it  is  the  persistent  affecta- 
tion of  classing  Berlioz  and  Wagner  together. 
They  had  nothing  in  common  save  their  great 
love  of  art  and  their  distrust  of  established  forms. 
Berlioz  abhorred  enharmonic  modulations,  dis- 
sonances resolved  indefinitely  one  after  another, 
continuous  melody  and  all  current  practices  of 
futuristic  music.  He  carried  this  so  far  that  he 
claimed  that  he  understood  nothing  in  the 
prelude  to  Tristan,  which  was  certainly  a  sincere 
claim  since,  almost  simultaneously,  he  hailed  the 
overture  of  Lohengrin,  which  is  conceived  in  an 
entirely  different  manner,  as  a  masterpiece.  He 
did  not  admit  that  the  voice  should  be  sacrificed 
and  relegated  to  the  rank  of  a  simple  unit  of  the 
orchestra.  Wagner,  for  his  part,  showed  at  his 
best  an  elegance  and  artistry  of  pen  which  may 
be  searched  for  in  vain  in  Berlioz's  work.  Ber- 
lioz opened  to  the  orchestra  the  doors  of  a  new 
world.  Wagner  hurled  himself  into  this  un- 

227 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

known  country  and  found  numerous  lands  to  till 
there.  But  what  dissimilarities  there  are  in  the 
styles  of  the  two  men!  In  their  methods  of 
treating  the  orchestra  and  the  voices,  in  their 
musical  architectonics,  and  in  their  conception 
of  opera ! 

In  spite  of  the  great  worth  of  Les  Troyens  and 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  Berlioz  shone  brightest  in  the 
concert  hall;  Wagner  is  primarily  a  man  of  the 
theater.  Berlioz  showed  clearly  in  Les  Troyens 
his  intention  of  approaching  Gluck,  while  Wag- 
ner freely  avowed  his  indebtedness  to  Weber, 
and  particularly  to  the  score  of  Euryanthe.  He 
might  have  added  that  he  owed  something  to 
Marschner,  but  he  never  spoke  of  that. 

The  more  we  study  the  works  of  these  two  men 
of  genius,  the  more  we  are  impressed  by  the 
tremendous  difference  between  them.  Their  re- 
semblance is  simply  one  of  those  imaginary 
things  which  the  critics  too  often  mistake  for  a  re- 
ality. The  critics  once  found  local  color  in  Ros- 
sini's Semiramide! 

Hans  de  Biilow  once  said  to  me  in  the  course  of 
a  conversation, 

228 


MEYERBEER 

V  «• 

"After  all  Meyerbeer  was  a  man  of  genius." 

If  we  fail  to  recognize  Meyerbeer's  genius,  we 
are  not  only  unjust  but  also  ungrateful.  In 
every  sense,  in  his  conception  of  opera,  in  his 
treatment  of  orchestration,  in  his  handling  of 
choruses,  even  in  stage  setting,  he  gave  us  new 
principles  by  which  our  modern  works  have 
profited  to  a  large  extent. 

Theophile  Gautier  was  no  musician,  but  he  had 
a  fine  taste  in  music  and  he  judged  Meyerbeer  as 
follows: 

"In  addition  to  eminent  musical  talents,  Mey- 
erbeer had  a  highly  developed  instinct  for  the 
stage.  He  goes  to  the  heart  of  a  situation,  fol- 
lows closely  the  meanings  of  the  words,  and  ob- 
serves both  the  historical  and  local  color  of  his 
subject.  .  .  .  Few  composers  have  understood 
opera  so  well." 

The  success  of  the  Italian  school  appeared  to 
have  utterly  ruined  this  understanding  and  care 
for  local  and  historical  color.  Rossini  in  the  last 
act  of  Otello  and  in  Guillaume  Tell  began  its 
rennaissance  with  a  boldness  for  which  he  de- 

229 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

serves  credit,  but  it  was  left  to  Meyerbeer  to  re- 
store it  to  its  former  glory. 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  his  individuality. 
The  amalgamation  of  his  Germanic  tendencies 
with  his  Italian  education  and  his  French  prefer- 
ences formed  an  ore  of  new  brilliancy  and  new 
depth  of  tone.  His  style  resembled  none  other. 
Fetis,  his  great  admirer  and  friend  and  the  fa- 
mous director  of  the  Conservatoire  at  Brussels, 
insisted,  and  with  reason,  on  this  distinction. 
His  style  was  characterized  by  the  importance  of 
the  rhythmic  element.  His  ballet  music  owes 
much  of  its  excellence  to  the  picturesque  variety 
of  the  rhythms. 

Instead  of  the  long  involved  overture  he  gave 
us  the  short  distinctive  prelude  which  has  been 
so  successful.  The  preludes  of  Robert  and  Les 
Huguenots  were  followed  by  the  preludes  of 
Lohengrin,  Faust,  Tristan,  Romeo,  La  Traviata, 
A'ida,  and  many  others  which  are  less  famous. 
Verdi  in  his  last  two  works  and  Richard  Strauss 
in  Salome  went  even  farther  and  suppressed  the 
prelude — a  none  too  agreeable  surprise.  It  is 
like  a  dinner  without  soup. 

230 


MEYERBEER 

Meyerbeer  gave  us  a  foretaste  of  the  famous 
leit-motif.  We  find  it  in  Robert  in  the  theme  of 
the  ballad,  which  the  orchestra  plays  again  while 
Bertram  goes  towards  the  back  of  the  stage. 
This  should  indicate  to  the  listener  his  satanic 
character.  We  find  it  in  the  Luther  chant  in  Les 
Huguenots  and  also  in  the  dream  of  Le  Prophete 
during  Jean's  recitative.  Here  the  orchestra 
with  its  modulated  tone  predicts  the  future  splen- 
dor of  the  cathedral  scene,  while  a  lute  plays  low 
notes,  embellished  by  a  delicate  weaving  in  of 
the  violins,  and  produces  a  remarkable  and  un- 
precedented effect.  He  introduced  on  the  stage 
the  ensembles  of  wind  instruments  (I  do  not 
mean  the  brass)  which  are  so  frequent  in  Mo- 
zart's great  concertos.  An  illustration  of  this  is 
the  entrance  of  Alice  in  the  second  act  of  Robert. 
An  echo  of  this  is  found  in  Elsa's  entrance  in  the 
second  act  of  Lohengrin.  Another  illustration 
is  the  entrance  of  Berthe  and  Fides  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Le  Prophete.  In  this  case  the 
author  indicated  a  pantomime.  This  is  never 
played  and  so  this  pretty  bit  loses  all  its  signifi- 
cance. 

231 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Meyerbeer  ventured  to  use  combinations  in 
harmony  which  were  considered  rash  at  that 
time.  They  pretend  that  the  sensitiveness  of 
the  ear  has  been  developed  since  then,  but  in 
reality  it  has  been  dulled  by  having  to  undergo 
the  most  violent  discords. 

The  beautiful  "progression"  of  the  exorcism 
in  the  fourth  act  of  Le  Prophete  was  not  accepted 
without  some  difficulty.  I  can  still  see  Gounod 
seated  at  a  piano  singing  the  debated  passage  and 
trying  to  convince  a  group  of  recalcitrant  listen- 
ers of  its  beauty. 

Meyerbeer  developed  the  role  of  the  English 
horn,  which  up  to  that  time  had  been  used  only 
rarely  and  timidly,  and  he  also  introduced  the 
bass  clarinet  into  the  orchestra.  But  the  two 
instruments,  as  he  used  them,  still  appeared 
somewhat  unusual.  They  were  objects  of  luxury, 
strangers  of  distinction  which  one  saluted  re- 
spectfully and  which  played  no  great  part.  Un- 
der Wagner's  management  they  became  a  definite 
part  of  the  household  and,  as  we  know,  brought 
in  a  wealth  of  coloring. 

It  is  an  open  question  whether  it  was  Meyer- 
232 


MEYERBEER 

beer  or  Scribe  who  planned  the  amazing  stage 
setting  in  the  cathedral  scene  in  Le  Prophete. 
It  must  have  been  Meyerbeer,  for  Scribe  was  not 
temperamentally  a  revolutionist,  and  this  scene 
was  really  revolutionary.  The  brilliant  proces- 
sion with  its  crowd  of  performers  which  goes 
across  the  stage  through  the  nave  into  the  choir, 
constantly  keeping  its  distance  from  the  audi- 
ence, is  an  impressive,  realistic  and  beautiful 
scene.  But  directors  who  go  to  great  expense 
for  the  costumes  cannot  understand  why  the  pro- 
cession should  file  anywhere  except  before  the 
footlights  as  near  the  audience  as  possible,  and  it 
is  extremely  difficult  to  get  any  other  method  of 
procedure. 

Furthermore,  the  amusing  idea  of  the  skating 
ballet  was  due  to  Meyerbeer.  At  the  time  there 
was  an  amusing  fellow  in  Paris  who  had  invented 
roller  skates  and  who  used  to  practise  his  favorite 
sport  on  fine  evenings  on  the  large  concrete  sur- 
faces of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  Meyerbeer 
saw  him  and  got  the  idea  of  the  famous  ballet. 
In  the  early  days  of  the  opera  it  certainly  was 
charming  to  see  the  skaters  come  on  accompanied 

233 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

by  a  pretty  chorus  and  a  rhythm  from  the  violins 
regulated  by  that  of  the  dancers.  But  the  per- 
formance began  at  seven  and  ended  at  midnight. 
Now  they  begin  at  eight  and  to  gain  the  hour  they 
had  to  accelerate  the  pace.  So  the  chorus  in 
question  was  sacrificed.  That  was  bad  for  Les 
Huguenots.  The  author  tried  to  make  a  good 
deal  out  of  the  last  act  with  its  beautiful  choruses 
in  the  church — a  development  of  the  Luther 
chant — and  the  terror  of  the  approaching  massa- 
cre. But  this  act  has  been  cut,  mutilated  and 
made  generally  unrecognizable.  They  even  go 
so  far  in  some  of  the  foreign  houses  as  to  sup- 
press it  entirely. 

I  once  saw  the  last  act  in  all  its  integrity  and 
with  six  harps  accompanying  the  famous  trio. 
We  shall  never  see  the  six  harps  again,  for 
Garnier,  instead  of  reproducing  exactly  the 
placing  of  the  orchestra  in  the  old  Opera,  man- 
aged so  well  in  the  new  one  that  they  are  unable 
to  put  in  the  six  harps  of  old  or  the  four  drums 
with  which  Meyerbeer  got  such  surprising  effects 
in  Robert  and  Le  Prophete.  I  believe,  however, 
that  recent  improvements  have  averted  this  dis- 

234 


MEYERBEER 

aster  in  a  certain  measure,  and  that  there  is  now 
a  place  for  the  drums.  But  we  shall  never  hear 
the  six  harps  again. 

We  must  say  something  of  the  genesis  of  Mey- 
erbeer's works,  for  in  many  instances  this  was 
curious  and  few  people  know  about  it. 

II 

We  might  like  to  see  works  spring  from  the 
author's  brain  as  complete  as  Minerva  was  when 
she  sprang  from  Jove's,  but  that  is  infrequently 
the  case.  When  we  study  the  long  series  of 
operas  which  Gluck  wrote,  we  are  surprised  to 
meet  some  things  which  we  recognize  as  having 
seen  before  in  the  masterpieces  which  immortal- 
ize his  name.  And  often  the  music  is  adapted 
to  entirely  different  situations  in  the  changed 
form.  The  words  of  a  follower  become  the  awe- 
some prophecy  of  a  high  priest.  The  trio  in 
Orphee  with  its  tender  love  and  expressions  of 
perfect  happiness  fairly  trembles  with  accents  of 
sorrow.  The  music  had  been  written  for  an 
entirely  different  situation  which  justified  them. 

235 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Massenet  has  told  us  that  he  borrowed  right  and 
left  from  his  unpublished  score,  La  Coupe  du 
Roi  de  Thule.  That  is  what  Gluck  did  with  his 
Elena  e  Paride  which  had  little  success.  I  may 
as  well  confess  that  one  of  the  ballets  in  Henry 
VIII  came  from  the  finale  of  an  opera-comique  in 
one  act.  This  work  was  finished  and  ready  to 
go  to  rehearsal  when  the  whole  thing  was  stopped 
because  I  had  the  audacity  to  assert  to  Nestor 
Roqueplan,  the  director  of  Favart  Hall,  that  Mo- 
zart's Le  Nozze  di  Figaro  was  a  masterpiece. 

Meyerbeer,  even  more  than  anyone,  tried  not 
to  lose  his  ideas  and  the  study  of  their  trans- 
formation is  extremely  interesting.  One  day 
Nuitter,  the  archivist  at  the  Opera,  learned  of  an 
important  sale  of  manuscripts  in  Berlin.  He  at- 
tended the  sale  and  brought  back  a  lot  of  Meyer- 
beer's rough  drafts  which  included  studies  for  a 
Faust  that  the  author  never  finished.  These 
fragments  give  no  idea  what  the  piece  would 
have  been.  We  see  Faust  and  Mephistopheles 
walking  in  Hell.  They  come  to  the  Tree  of  Hu- 
man Knowledge  on  the  banks  of  the  Styx  and 
Faust  picks  the  fruit.  From  this  detail  it  is 

236 


MEYERBEER 

easy  to  imagine  that  the  libretto  is  bizarre.  The 
authorship  of  this  amazing  libretto  is  unknown, 
but  it  is  not  strange  that  Meyerbeer  soon  aban- 
doned it.  From  this  still-born  Faust,  Scribe,  at 
the  request  of  the  author,  constructed  Robert  le 
Diable.  An  aria  sung  by  Faust  on  the  banks  of 
the  Styx  becomes  the  Valse  Infernale. 

The  necessity  of  utilizing  pre-existing  frag- 
ments explains  some  of  the  incoherence  of  this 
incomprehensible  piece.  It  also  explains  the 
creation  of  Bertram,  half  man,  half  devil,  who 
was  invented  as  a  substitute  for  Mephistopheles. 
The  fruit  of  the  Tree  of  Human  Knowledge  be- 
came the  Rameau  Veneree  in  the  third  act,  and 
the  beautiful  religious  scene  in  the  fifth  act, 
which  has  no  relation  to  the  action,  is  a  transpo- 
sition of  the  Easter  scene. 

So  Scribe  should  not  be  blamed  for  making  a 
poor  piece  when  he  had  so  many  difficulties  to 
contend  with.  He  must  have  lost  his  head  a  lit- 
tle for  Robert's  mother  was  called  Berthe  in  the 
first  act  and  Rosalie  in  the  third.  However,  the 
answer  might  be  that  she  changed  her  name 
when  she  became  religious. 

237 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Later,  Scribe  was  put  to  another  no  less  diffi- 
cult test  with  UEtoile  du  Nord.  When  Meyer- 
beer was  the  conductor  at  the  Berlin  Opera,  he 
wrote  on  command  Le  Camp  de  Silesie  with  Fred- 
erick the  Great  as  the  hero  and  Jenny  Lind  as  the 
musical  star.  As  we  know,  Frederick  was  a  mu- 
sician, for  he  both  composed  music  and  played 
the  flute,  while  Jenny  Lind,  the  Swedish  nightin- 
gale, was  a  great  singer.  A  contest  between  the 
nightingale  and  the  flute  was  sure  to  follow  or 
theatrical  instinct  is  a  vain  phrase.  But  in  the 
piece  Scribe  created,  Peter  the  Great  took  Fred- 
erick the  Great's  place  and  to  give  a  motive  for 
the  grace  notes  in  the  last  act  it  was  necessary 
for  the  terrible  Tsar,  a  half  savage  barbarian,  to 
learn  to  play  the  flute. 

It  is  not  worth  while  telling  how  the  Tsar 
took  lessons  on  the  flute  from  a  young  pastry 
cook  who  came  on  the  stage  with  a  basket  of 
cakes  on  his  head;  how  the  cook  later  became  a 
lord,  and  many  other  details  of  this  absurd  play. 
It  is  permitted  to  be  absurd  on  the  stage,  if  it  is 
done  so  that  the  absurdity  is  forgotten.  But  in 
this  instance  it  was  impossible  to  forget  the  ab- 

238 


MEYERBEER 

surdities.  The  extravagance  of  the  libretto  led 
the  musician  into  many  unfortunate  things. 
This  extremely  interesting  score  is  very  uneven, 
but  there  are  a  thousand  details  worth  the  atten- 
tion of  the  professional  musician.  Beauty  even 
appears  in  the  score  at  moments,  and  there  are 
charming  and  picturesque  bits,  as  well  as  pueril- 
ities and  shocking  vulgarities. 

Public  curiosity  was  aroused  for  a  long  time 
by  clever  advance  notices  and  had  reached  a  high 
pitch  when  UEtoile  du  Nord  appeared.  The 
work  was  carried  by  the  exceptional  talents  of 
Bataille  and  Caroline  Duprez  and  was  enor- 
mously successful  at  the  start,  but  this  success 
has  grown  steadily  less.  Faure  and  Madame 
Patti  gave  some  fine  performances  in  London. 
We  shall  probably  never  see  their  equal  again, 
and  it  is  not  desirable  that  we  should  either  from 
the  standpoint  of  art  or  of  the  author. 

Les  Huguenots  was  not  an  opera  pieced  to- 
gether out  of  others,  but  it  did  not  reach  the  pub- 
lic as  the  author  wrote  it.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  first  act  there  was  a  game  of  cup  and  ball  on 
which  the  author  had  set  his  heart.  But  the 

239 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

balls  had  to  strike  at  the  exact  moment  indicated 
in  the  score  and  the  players  never  succeeded  in 
accomplishing  that.  The  passage  had  to  be  sup- 
pressed but  it  is  preserved  in  the  library  at  the 
Opera.  They  also  had  to  suppress  the  part  of 
Catherine  de  Medici  who  should  preside  at  the 
conference  where  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholo- 
mew was  planned.  Her  part  was  merged  with 
that  of  St.  Pris.  They  also  suppressed  the  first 
scene  in  the  last  act,  where  Raoul,  disheveled  and 
covered  with  blood,  interrupted  the  ball  and  up- 
set the  merriment  by  announcing  the  massacre 
to  the  astonished  dancers. 

But  it  is  a  question  whether  we  should  believe 
the  legend  that  the  great  duet,  the  climax  of  the 
whole  work,  was  improvised  during  the  re- 
hearsals at  the  request  of  Norritt  and  Madame 
Falcon.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that.  The  work, 
as  is  well  known,  was  taken  from  Merimee's 
Chronique  du  regne  de  Charles  IX.  This  scene 
is  in  the  romance  and  it  is  almost  impossible  that 
Meyerbeer  had  no  idea  of  putting  it  into  his 
opera.  More  probably  the  people  at  the  theatre 
wanted  the  act  to  end  with  the  blessing  of  the 

240 


MEYERBEER 

daggers,  and  the  author  with  his  duet  in  his  port- 
folio only  had  to  take  it  out  to  satisfy  his  inter- 
preters. A  beautiful  scene  like  this  with  its 
sweep  and  pleasing  innovation  is  not  written 
hastily.  This  duet  should  be  heard  when  the 
author's  intentions  and  the  nuances  which  make 
a  part  of  the  idea  are  respected  and  not  replaced 
by  inventions  in  bad  taste  which  they  dare  to  call 
traditions.  The  real  traditions  have  been  lost 
and  this  admirable  scene  has  lost  its  beauty. 

The  manner  in  which  the  duet  ends  has  not 
been  noted  sufficiently.  Raoul's  phrase,  God 
guard  our  days.  God  of  our  refuge!  remains  in 
suspense  and  the  orchestra  brings  it  to  an  end, 
the  first  example  of  a  practice  used  frequently  in 
modern  works. 

We  do  not  know  how  Meyerbeer  got  his  idea  of 
putting  the  schismatic  John  Huss  on  the  stage 
under  the  name  of  John  of  Leyden.  Whether 
this  idea  was  original  with  him  or  was  suggested 
by  Scribe,  who  made  a  fantastic  person  out  of 
John,  we  do  not  know.  We  only  know  that  the 
role  of  the  prophet's  mother  was  originally  in- 
tended for  Madame  Stoltz,  but  she  had  left  the 

241 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Opera.  Meyerbeer  heard  Madame  Pauline  Vi- 
ardot  at  Vienna  and  found  in  her  his  ideal,  so  he 
created  the  redoubtable  role  of  Fides  for  her* 
The  part  of  Jean  was  given  to  the  tenor  Roger, 
the  star  of  the  Opera-Comique,  and  he  played 
and  sang  it  well.  Levasseur,  the  Marcel  of  Les 
Huguenots  and  the  Bertram  of  Robert,  played 
the  part  of  Zacharie. 

Le  Prophete  was  enormously  successful  in 
spite  of  the  then  powerful  censer-bearers  of  the 
Italian  school.  We  now  see  its  defects  rather 
than  its  merits.  Meyerbeer  is  criticised  for  not 
putting  into  practice  theories  he  did  not  know 
and  no  account  is  taken  of  his  fearlessness,  which 
was  great  for  that  period.  No  one  else  could 
have  drawn  the  cathedral  scene  with  such  breadth 
of  stroke  and  extraordinary  brilliancy.  The 
paraphrase  of  Domine  salvum  fac  regem  reveals 
great  ingenuity.  His  method  of  treating  the  or- 
gan is  wonderful,  and  his  idea  of  the  ritournello 
Sur  le  Jeu  de  hautbois  is  charming.  This  pre- 
cedes and  introduces  the  children's  chorus,  and  is 
constructed  on  a  novel  theme  which  is  developed 
brilliantly  by  the  choruses,  the  orchestra  and  the 

242 


Meyerbeer,  Composer  of  Les  Huguenots 


MEYERBEER 

organ  combined.  The  repetition  of  the  Domine 
Salvum  at  the  end  of  the  scene,  which  bursts 
forth  abruptly  in  a  different  key,  is  full  of  color 
and  character. 

Ill 

The  story  of  Le  Pardon  de  Ploermel  is  inter- 
esting. It  was  first  called  Dinorah,  a  name 
which  Meyerbeer  picked  up  abroad.  But  Mey- 
erbeer liked  to  change  the  titles  of  his  operas 
several  times  in  the  course  of  the  rehearsals  in 
order  to  keep  public  curiosity  at  fever  heat.  He 
had  the  notion  of  writing  an  opera-comique  in 
one  act,  and  he  asked  his  favorite  collaborators, 
Jules  Barbier  and  Michael  Carre,  for  a  libretto. 
They  produced  Dinorah  in  three  scenes  and  with 
but  three  characters.  The  music  was  written 
promptly  and  was  given  to  Perrin,  the  famous 
director,  whose  unfortunate  influence  soon  made 
itself  felt.  A  director's  first  idea  at  that  time 
was  to  demand  changes  in  the  piece  given  him. 
"A  single  act  by  you,  Master?  Is  that  permis- 
sible? What  can  we  put  on  after  that?  Anew 
work  by  Meyerbeer  should  take  up  the  entire 

243 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

evening."  That  was  the  way  the  insidious  di- 
rector talked,  and  there  was  all  the  more  chance 
of  his  being  listened  to  as  the  author  was  pos- 
sessed by  a  mania  for  retouching  and  making 
changes.  So  Meyerbeer  took  the  score  to  the 
Mediterranean  where  he  spent  the  winter.  The 
next  spring  he  brought  back  the  work  developed 
into  three  acts  with  choruses  and  minor  charac- 
ters. Besides  these  additions  he  had  written  the 
words  which  Barbier  and  Carre  should  have  done. 
The  rehearsals  were  tedious.  Meyerbeer 
wanted  Faure  and  Madame  Carvalho  in  the  lead- 
ing roles  but  one  was  at  the  Opera-Comique  and 
the  other  at  her  own  house,  the  Theatre-Lyrique. 
The  work  went  back  and  forth  from  the  Place 
Favart  to  the  Place  du  Chatelet.  But  the  au- 
thor's hesitancy  was  at  bottom  only  a  pretext. 
What  he  wanted  was  to  secure  a  postponement 
of  Limnander's  opera  Les  Blancs  et  les  Bleu*. 
The  action  of  this  work  and  of  Dinorah,  as  well, 
took  place  in  Brittany.  In  the  hope  of  being 
Meyerbeer's  choice,  both  theatres  turned  poor 
Limnander  away.  Finally,  Dinorah  fell  to  the 
Opera-Comique.  After  long  hard  work,  which 

244 


MEYERBEER 

the  author  demanded,  Madame  Cabel  and  MM. 
Faure  and  Sainte-Foix  gave  a  perfect  perform- 
ance. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  criticism  of  having 
the  hunter,  the  reaper,  and  the  shepherd  sing  a 
prayer  together  at  the  beginning  of  the  third  act. 
This  was  not  considered  theatrical;  to-day  that 
is  a  virtue. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  talk  about  L'Afri- 
canne,  which  had  been  looked  for  for  a  long  time 
and  which  seemed  to  be  almost  legendary  and 
mysterious ;  it  still  is  for  that  matter.  The  sub- 
ject of  the  opera  was  unknown.  All  that  was 
known  was  that  the  author  was  trying  to  find  an 
interpreter  and  could  get  none  to  his  liking. 

Then  Marie  Cruvelli,  a  German  singer  with 
an  Italian  training,  appeared.  With  her  beauty 
and  prodigious  voice  she  shone  like  a  meteor  in 
the  theatrical  firmament.  Meyerbeer  found  his 
Africanne  realized  in  her  and  at  his  request  she 
was  engaged  at  the  Opera.  Her  engagement 
was  made  the  occasion  for  a  brilliant  revival  of 
Les  Huguenots  and  Meyerbeer  wrote  new  ballet 
music  for  it.  To-day  we  have  no  idea  of  what 

245 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Les  Huguenots  was  then.  Then  the  author 
went  back  to  his  Africanne  and  went  to  work 
again.  He  used  to  go  to  see  the  brilliant  singer 
about  it  nearly  every  day,  when  she  suddenly 
announced  that  she  was  going  to  leave  the  stage 
to  become  the  Comtesse  Vigier !  Meyerbeer  was 
discouraged  and  he  threw  his  unfinished  manu- 
script into  a  drawer  where  it  stayed  until  Marie 
Sass  had  so  developed  her  voice  and  talent  that 
he  made  up  his  mind  to  entrust  the  role  of  Selika 
to  her.  He  wanted  Faure  for  the  role  of  Nelusko 
and  he  was  already  at  the  Opera,  so  he  had  the 
management  engage  Naudin,  the  Italian  tenor,  as 
well. 

But  Scribe  had  died  during  the  long  period 
which  had  elapsed  since  the  marriage  of  the  Com- 
tesse Vigier.  Meyerbeer  was  now  left  to  him- 
self, and  too  much  inclined  to  revisions  of  every 
kind  as  he  was,  re-made  the  piece  to  his  fancy. 
When  it  was  completed — it  didn't  resemble  any- 
thing and  the  author  planned  to  finish  it  at  the 
rehearsals. 

As  we  know,  Meyerbeer  died  suddenly.  He 
realized  that  he  was  dying  and  as  he  knew  how 

246 


MEYERBEER 

necessary  his  presence  was  for  a  performance  of 
L' Africanne  he  forbade  its  appearance.  But  his 
prohibition  was  only  verbal  as  he  could  no  longer 
write.  The  public  was  impatiently  awaiting 
V 'Africanne,  so  they  went  ahead  with  it. 

When  Perrin  and  his  nephew  du  Locle  opened 
the  package  of  manuscripts  Meyerbeer  had  left, 
they  were  stupefied  at  finding  no  U  Africanne. 

"Never  mind,"  said  Perrin,  "the  public  wants 
an  Africanne  and  it  shall  have  one." 

He  summoned  Fetis,  Meyerbeer's  enthusiastic 
admirer,  and  the  three,  Fetis,  Perrin  and  du 
Locle,  managed  to  evolve  the  opera  we  know 
from  the  scraps  the  author  had  left  in  disorder. 
They  did  not  accomplish  this,  however,  without 
considerable  difficulty,  without  some  incoher- 
ences, numerous  suppressions  and  even  addi- 
tions. Perrin  was  the  inventor  of  the  wonder- 
ful map  on  which  Selika  recognized  Madagascar. 
They  took  the  characters  there  in  order  to  justify 
the  term  Africanne  applied  to  the  heroine. 
They  also  introduced  the  Brahmin  religion  to 
Madagascar  in  order  to  avoid  moving  the  char- 
acters to  India  where  the  fourth  act  should  take 

247 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

place.  The  first  performance  was  imminent 
when  they  found  that  the  work  was  too  long. 
So  they  cut  out  an  original  ballet  where  a  savage 
beat  a  tom-tom,  and  they  cut  and  fitted  together 
mercilessly.  In  the  last  act  Selika,  alone  and 
dying,  should  see  the  paradise  of  the  Brahmins 
appear  as  in  a  vision.  But  Faure  wanted  to 
appear  again  at  the  finale,  so  they  had  to  adapt  a 
bit  taken  from  the  third  act  and  suppress  the 
vision.  This  is  the  reason  why  Nelusko  suc- 
cumbs so  quickly  to  the  deadly  perfume  of  the 
poisonous  flowers,  while  Selika  resists  so  long. 
The  riturnello  of  Selika's  aria,  which  should  be 
performed  with  lowered  curtain  as  the  queen 
gazes  over  the  sea  and  at  the  departing  vessel  far 
away  on  the  horizon,  became  a  vehicle  for  en- 
cores— the  last  thing  that  was  ever  in  Meyer- 
beer's mind.  But  the  worst  was  the  liberty  Feds 
took  in  retouching  the  orchestration.  As  a  com- 
pliment to  Adolph  Sax  he  substituted  a  saxa- 
phone  for  the  bass  clarinet  which  the  author  in- 
dicated. This  resulted  in  the  suppression  of 
that  part  of  the  aria  beginning  0  Paradis  sorti  de 
Vonde  as  the  saxophone  did  not  produce  a  good 

248 


MEYERBEER 

effect.  Fetis  also  allowed  Perrin  to  make  over  a 
bass  solo  into  a  chorus,  the  Bishop's  Chorus. 
The  great  vocal  range  in  this  is  poorly  adapted 
for  a  chorus.  Some  barbarous  modulations  are 
certainly  apocryphal.  .  .  . 

We  are  unable  to  imagine  what  L'Africanne 
would  have  been  if  Scribe  had  lived  and  the 
authors  had  put  it  into  shape.  The  work  we 
have  is  illogical  and  incomplete.  The  words  are 
simply  monstrous  and  Scribe  certainly  would  not 
have  kept  them.  This  is  the  case  in  the  passage 
in  the  great  duet: 

0  ma  Selika,  vous  regnez  sur  mon  ame! 
- — Ah!  ne  dis  pas  ces  mots  brulante! 
Us  m'egarent  moi-meme.  .  .  . 

The  music  stitched  to  this  impossible  piece, 
however,  had  its  admirers — even  fanatical  ad- 
mirers— so  great  was  the  prestige  of  the  author's 
name  at  the  time  of  its  appearance.  We  must 
not  forget  that  there  are,  indeed,  some  beautiful 
pages  in  this  chaos.  The  religious  ceremony  in 
the  fourth  act  and  the  Brahmin  recitative  accom- 
panied by  the  pizzicati  of  the  bass  may  be  men- 

249 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

tioned  as  an  indication  of  this.  The  latter  pas- 
sage is  not  in  favor,  however ;  they  play  it  down 
without  conviction  and  so  deprive  it  of  all  its 
strength  and  majesty. 

I  said,  at  the  beginning  of  this  study,  that  we 
were  ungrateful  to  Meyerbeer,  and  this  ingrati- 
tude is  double  on  the  part  of  France,  for  he  loved 
her.  He  only  had  to  say  the  word  to  have  any 
theatre  in  Europe  opened  to  him,  yet  he  preferred 
to  them  all  the  Opera  at  Paris  and  even  the 
Opera-Comique  where  the  choruses  and  orchestra 
left  much  to  be  desired.  When  he  did  work  for 
Paris  after  he  had  given  Margherita  d'Anjou  and 
Le  Crociato  in  Italy,  he  was  forced  to  accommo- 
date himself  to  French  taste  just  as  Rossini  and 
Donizetti  were.  The  latter  wrote  for  the  Opera- 
Comique  La  Fille  du  Regiment,  a  military  and 
patriotic  work,  and  its  dashing  and  glorious  Salut 
a  la  France  has  resounded  through  the  whole 
world.  Foreigners  do  not  take  so  much  pains  in 
our  day,  and  France  applauds  Die  Meistersinger 
which  ends  with  a  hymn  to  German  art.  Such 
is  progress ! 

250 


MEYERBEER 

Something  must  be  said  of  a  little  known  score, 
Struensee,  which  was  written  for  a  drama  which 
was  so  weak  that  it  prevented  the  music  gaining 
the  success  it  deserved.  The  composer  showed 
himself  in  this  more  artistic  than  in  anything  else 
he  did.  It  should  have  been  heard  at  the  Odeon 
with  another  piece  written  by  Jules  Barbier  on 
the  same  subject.  The  overture  used  to  appear 
in  the  concerts  as  did  the  polonnaise,  but  like  the 
overture  to  Guillaume  Tell,  they  have  disap- 
peared. These  overtures  are  not  negligible. 
The  overture  to  Guillaume  Tell  is  notable  for  the 
unusual  invention  of  the  five  violoncellos  and  its 
storm  with  its  original  beginning,  to  say  nothing 
of  its  pretty  pastoral.  The  fine  depth  of  tone  in 
the  exordium  of  Struensee  and  the  fugue  develop- 
ment in  the  main  theme  are  also  not  to  be  de- 
spised. But  all  that,  we  are  told,  is  lacking  in 
elevation  and  depth.  Possibly;  but  it  is  not  al- 
ways necessary  to  descend  to  Hell  and  go  up  to 
Heaven.  There  is  certainly  more  music  in  these 
overtures  than  in  Grieg's  Peer  Gynt  which  has 
been  dinned  into  our  ears  so  much. 

But  enough  of  this.  I  must  stop  with  the 
251 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

operas,  for  to  consider  the  rest  of  his  music  would 
necessitate  a  study  of  its  own  and  that  would  take 
us  too  far  afield.  My  hope  is  that  these  lines 
may  repair  an  unnecessary  injustice  and  re-direct 
the  fastidious  who  may  read  them  to  a  great  mu- 
sician whom  the  general  public  has  never  ceased 
to  listen  to  and  applaud. 


252 


CHAPTER  XXI 

JACQUES    OFFENBACH 

It  is  dangerous  to  prophesy.  Not  long  ago  I 
was  speaking  of  Offenbach,  trying  to  do  justice  to 
his  marvellous  natural  gifts  and  deploring  his 
squandering  them.  And  I  was  imprudent 
enough  to  say  that  posterity  would  never  know 
him.  Now  posterity  is  proving  that  I  was  wrong, 
for  Offenbach  is  coming  back  into  fashion.  Our 
contemporaneous  composers  forget  that  Mozart, 
Beethoven  and  Sebastian  Bach  knew  how  to 
laugh  at  times.  They  distrust  all  gaiety  and  de- 
clare it  unesthetic.  As  the  good  public  cannot 
resign  itself  to  getting  along  without  gaiety,  it 
goes  to  operetta  and  turns  naturally  to  Offenbach 
who  created  it  and  furnished  an  inexhaustible 
supply.  My  phrase  is  not  exaggerated,  for  Of- 
fenbach hardly  dreamed  of  creating  an  art.  He 
was  endowed  with  a  genius  for  the  comic  and  an 

253 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

abundance  of  melody,  but  he  had  no  thought  of 
doing  anything  beyond  providing  material  for  the 
theatre  he  managed  at  the  time.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  he  was  almost  its  only  author. 

He  was  unable  to  rid  himself  of  his  Germanic 
influences  and  so  corrupted  the  taste  of  an  entire 
generation  by  his  false  prosody,  which  has  been 
incorrectly  considered  originality.  In  addition 
he  was  lacking  in  taste.  At  the  time  they 
affected  a  dreadful  mannerism  of  always  stopping 
on  the  next  to  the  last  note  of  a  passage,  whether 
or  not  it  was  associated  with  a  mute  syllable. 
This  mannerism  had  no  purpose  beyond  indicat- 
ing to  the  audience  the  end  of  a  passage  and  giv- 
ing the  claque  the  signal  to  applaud.  Offenbach 
did  not  belong  to  that  heroic  strain  to  which  suc- 
cess is  the  least  of  its  cares.  So  he  adopted  this 
mannerism,  and  often  his  ingeniously  turned  and 
charming  couplets  are  ruined  by  this  silly  absurd- 
ity now  gone  out  of  fashion. 

Furthermore,  he  wrote  badly,  for  his  early  edu- 
cation was  neglected.  If  the  Tales  of  Hoffman 
shows  traces  of  a  practised  pen,  it  is  because  Guir- 
aud  finished  the  score  and  went  out  of  his  way 

254 


JACQUES  OFFENBACH 

to  remedy  some  of  the  author's  mistakes.  Leav- 
ing aside  the  bad  prosody  and  the  minor  defects 
in  taste,  we  have  left  a  work  which  shows 
a  wealth  of  invention,  melody,  and  sparkling 
fancy  comparable  to  Gretry's. 

Gretry  was  no  more  a  great  musician  than 
Offenbach,  for  he  also  wrote  badly.  The  essen- 
tial difference  between  the  two  was  the  care, 
not  only  in  his  prosody  but  also  in  his  dec- 
lamation, which  Gretry  tried  to  reproduce  mu- 
sically with  all  possible  exactness.  He  over- 
shot the  mark  in  this  for  he  did  not  see  that  in 
singing  the  expression  of  a  note  is  modified  by  the 
harmonic  scheme  which  accompanies  it.  It 
must  be  recognized,  in  addition,  that  many  times 
Gretry  was  carried  away  by  his  melodic  inventive- 
ness and  forgot  his  own  principles  so  that  he  rele- 
gated his  care  for  declamation  to  second  place. 

What  hurt  Gretry  was  his  unbounded  conceit, 
with  which  Offenbach,  to  his  credit,  was  never 
afflicted.  As  an  indication  of  this,  he  dared  to 
write  in  his  advice  to  young  musicians : 

"Those  who  have  genius  will  make  opera-com- 
ique  like  mine ;  those  who  have  talent  will  write 

255 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

opera  like  Gluck's ;  while  those  who  have  neither 
genius  nor  talent,  will  write  symphonies  like 
Haydn's." 

However,  he  tried  to  make  an  opera  like 
Gluck's  and  in  spite  of  his  great  efforts  and  his  in- 
teresting inventions,  he  could  not  equal  the  work 
of  his  formidable  rival. 

Although  he  was  not  a  great  musician,  Offen- 
bach had  a  surprising  natural  instinct  and  made 
here  and  there  curious  discoveries  in  harmony. 
In  speaking  of  these  discoveries  I  must  go  slightly 
into  the  theory  of  harmony  and  resign  myself  to 
being  understood  only  by  those  of  my  readers  who 
are  more  or  less  musicians.  In  a  slight  work, 
Daphnis  et  Chloe,  Offenbach  risked  a  dominant 
eleventh  without  either  introduction  or  conclu- 
sion— an  extraordinary  audacity  at  the  time.  A 
short  course  in  harmony  is  necessary  for  the  un- 
derstanding of  this.  We  must  start  with  the  fact 
that,  theoretically,  all  dissonances  must  be  intro- 
duced and  concluded,  which  we  cannot  explain 
here,  but  this  leading  up  to  and  away  from  have 
for  their  purpose  softening  the  harshness  of  the 

256 


JACQUES  OFFENBACH 

dissonance  which  was  greatly  feared  in  bygone 
times.  Take  if  you  please,  the  simple  key  of  C 
natural.  Do  is  the  keynote,  sol  is  the  dominant. 
Place  on  this  dominant  two-thirds — si-re — and 
you  have  the  perfect  dominant  chord.  Add  a 
third  fa  and  you  have  the  famous  dominant  sev- 
enth, a  dissonance  which  to-day  seems  actually 
agreeable.  Not  so  long  ago  they  thought  that 
they  ought  to  prepare  for  the  dissonance.  In  the 
Sixteenth  Century  it  was  not  regarded  as  admis- 
sible at  all,  for  one  hears  the  two  notes  si  and  fa 
simultaneously  and  this  seems  intolerable  to  the 
ear.  They  used  to  call  it  the  Diabolus  in  mu- 
sica. 

Palestrina  was  the  first  to  employ  it  in  an  an- 
them. Opinions  differ  on  this,  and  certain  stu- 
dents of  harmony  pretend  that  the  chord  which 
Palestrina  used  only  has  the  appearance  of  the 
dominant  seventh.  I  do  not  concur  in  this  view. 
But  however  the  case  may  be,  the  glory  of  un- 
chaining the  devil  in  music  belongs  to  Montre- 
verde.  That  was  the  beginning  of  modern 
music. 

Later,  a  new  third  was  superimposed  and  they 
257 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

dared  the  chord  sol-si-re-fa-la.  The  inventor  is 
unknown,  but  Beethoven  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  to  make  any  considerable  use  of  it.  He  used 
the  chord  in  such  a  way  that,  in  spite  of  its  cur- 
rent use  to-day,  in  his  works  it  appears  like  some- 
thing new  and  strange.  This  chord  imposes  its 
characteristics  on  the  second  motif  of  the  first 
part  of  the  Symphony  in  C  minor.  This  is  what 
gives  such  amazing  charm  to  the  long  colloquy 
between  the  flute,  the  oboe  and  the  clarinets, 
which  always  surprises  and  arouses  the  listener, 
in  the  andante  of  the  same  symphony.  Fetis  in 
his  Traite  d'Harmonie  inveighed  against  this  de- 
lightful passage.  He  admits  that  people  like  it, 
but,  according  to  him,  the  author  had  no  right  to 
write  it  and  the  listener  has  no  right  to  admire  it. 
Scholars  often  have  strange  ideas. 

Then  Richard  Wagner  came  along  and  the 
reign  of  the  ninth  dominant  took  the  place  of  the 
seventh.  That  is  what  gives  Tannhauser,  and 
Lohengrin  their  exciting  character,  which  is  dear 
to  those  who  demand  in  music  above  everything 
else  the  pleasure  due  to  shocks  to  the  nervous  sys- 
tem. Imitators  have  fallen  foul  of  this  easy  pro- 

258 


Jacques  Offenbach 


JACQUES  OFFENBACH 

cedure,  and  with  a  laughable  naivete  imagine 
that  in  this  way  they  can  easily  equal  Wagner. 
And  they  have  succeeded  in  making  this  valuable 
chord  absolutely  banal. 

By  adding  still  another  third  we  have  the  dom- 
inant eleventh.  Offenbach  used  this,  but  it  has 
played  but  a  small  part  since  then.  Beyond  that 
we  cannot  go,  for  a  third  more  and  we  are  back 
to  the  basic  note,  two  octaves  away. 

But  innovations  in  harmony  are  rare  in  Offen- 
bach's work.  What  makes  him  interesting  is  his 
fertility  in  invention  of  melodies  and  few  have 
equaled  him  in  this.  He  improvised  constantly 
and  with  incredible  rapidity.  His  manuscripts 
give  the  impression  of  having  been  done  with  the 
point  of  a  needle.  There  is  nothing  useless  any- 
where in  them.  He  used  abbreviations  as  much 
as  he  could  and  the  simplicity  of  his  harmony 
helped  him  here.  As  a  result  he  was  able  to  pro- 
duce his  light  works  in  an  exceedingly  short  time. 

He  had  the  luck  to  attach  Madame  Ugalde  to 
his  company.  Her  powers  had  already  begun  to 
decline  but  she  was  still  brilliant.  While  she 
was  giving  a  spectacular  revival  of  Orphee  aux 

259 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Enfers,  he  wrote  Les  Bavards  for  her.  He  was 
inspired  by  the  hope  of  an  unusual  interpreta- 
tion and  he  so  surpassed  himself  that  he  produced 
a  small  masterpiece.  A  revival  of  this  work 
would  certainly  be  successful  if  that  were  pos- 
sible, but  the  peculiar  merits  of  the  creatrix  of 
the  role  would  be  necessary  and  I  do  not  see  her 
like  anywhere. 

It  is  strange  but  true  that  Offenbach  lost  all  his 
good  qualities  as  soon  as  he  took  himself  seri- 
ously. But  he  was  not  the  only  case  of  this  in 
the  history  of  music.  Cramer  and  Clementi 
wrote  studies  and  exercises  which  are  marvels  of 
style,  but  their  sonatas  and  concertos  are  tiresome 
in  their  mediocrity.  Offenbach's  works  which 
were  given  at  the  Opera-Comique — Robinson 
Crusoe,  Vert-Vert,  and  Fantasio  are  much  infe- 
rior to  La  Chanson  de  Fortunio,  La  Belle  Helene 
and  many  other  justly  famous  operettas.  There 
have  been  several  unprofitable  revivals  of  La 
Belle  Helene.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
role  of  Helene  was  designed  for  Mile.  Schneider. 
She  was  beautiful  and  talented  and  had  an  admi- 
rable mezzo-soprano  voice.  The  slight  voice  of 

260 


JACQUES  OFFENBACH 

the  ordinary  singer  of  operetta  is  insufficient  for 
the  part.  Furthermore,  traditions  have  sprung 
up.  The  comic  element  has  been  suppressed 
and  the  piece  has  been  denatured  by  this  change. 
In  Germany  they  conceived  the  idea  of  playing 
this  farce  seriously  with  an  archaic  stage  setting ! 
Jacques  Offenbach  will  become  a  classic. 
While  this  may  be  unexpected,  what  doesn't  hap- 
pen? Everything  is  possible — even  the  impos- 
sible. 


261 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THEIR   MAJESTIES 

Queen  Victoria  did  me  the  honor  to  receive  me 
twice  at  Windsor  Castle,  and  Queen  Alexandra 
paid  me  the  same  honor  at  Buckingham  Palace  in 
London.  The  first  time  I  saw  Queen  Victoria  I 
was  presented  to  her  by  the  Baroness  de  Caters. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Lablache  and  had  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  voices  and  the  greatest  tal- 
ent that  I  have  ever  known.  This  charming 
woman  had  been  left  a  widow  and  so  she  became 
an  artist,  appearing  in  concerts  and  giving  sing- 
ing lessons.  At  the  time  of  which  I  speak  she  was 
teaching  Princess  Beatrice,  now  the  mother-in- 
law  of  the  King  of  Spain.  In  all  the  glory  of  the 
freshness  of  youth,  the  Princess  was  endowed 
with  a  charming  voice  which  the  Baroness  guided 
perfectly.  The  Princess  received  Madame  de 
Caters  and  myself  with  a  gracefulness  which 
was  increased  by  her  unusual  bashfulness. 

262 


THEIR  MAJESTIES 

Her  Majesty,  in  the  meantime,  was  finishing 
her  luncheon.  I  was  somewhat  apprehensive 
through  having  heard  of  the  coldness  which  the 
Queen  affected  at  this  sort  of  audience,  so  I  was 
more  than  surprised  when  she  came  in  with  both 
hands  extended  to  take  mine  and  when  she  ad- 
dressed me  with  real  cordiality.  She  was  very 
fond  of  Baroness  de  Caters  and  that  was  the  secret 
of  the  reception  which  put  me  at  my  ease  at  once. 
Her  Majesty  wanted  to  hear  me  play  the  organ 
(there  is  an  excellent  one  in  the  chapel  at  Wind- 
sor), and  then  the  piano.  Finally,  I  had  the 
honor  of  accompanying  the  Princess  as  she  sang 
the  aria  from  Etienne  Marcel.  Her  Royal  High- 
ness sang  with  great  clearness  and  distinctness, 
but  it  was  the  first  time  she  had  sung  before  her 
august  mother  and  she  was  frightened  almost  to 
death.  The  Queen  was  so  delighted  that  some 
days  later,  without  my  being  told  of  it,  she  sum- 
moned to  Windsor,  Madame  Gye,  wife  of  the 
manager  of  Covent  Garden, — the  famous  singer 
Albani — to  ask  to  have  Etienne  Marcel  staged  at 
her  own  theatre.  The  Queen's  wish  was  not 
granted. 

263 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

I  returned  to  Windsor  seventeen  years  later,  in 
company  with  Johann  Wolf,  who  was  for  many 
years  Queen  Victoria's  chosen  violinist.  We 
dined  at  the  palace,  and,  if  we  did  not  enjoy  the 
distinction  of  sitting  at  the  royal  tahle,  we  were 
nevertheless  in  good  company  with  the  young 
princesses,  daughters  of  the  Duke  of  Connaught. 
We  were  lodged  at  a  hotel  for  the  honor  of  sleep- 
ing at  the  Castle  was  reserved  for  very  important 
personages — an  honor  which  need  not  be  envied, 
for  the  sleeping  apartments  are  really  servants' 
rooms.  But  etiquette  decrees  it. 

Dinner  was  over,  and  princes  in  full  uniform 
and  princesses  in  elaborate  evening  dress  stood 
about,  waiting  for  her  Majesty's  appearance.  I 
was  heartbroken  when  I  saw  her  enter,  for  she 
was  almost  carried  by  her  Indian  servant  and  ob- 
viously could  not  walk  alone.  But  once  seated 
at  a  small  table,  she  was  just  as  she  had  been 
before,  with  her  wonderful  charm,  her  simple 
manner  and  her  musical  voice.  Only  her  white 
hair  bore  witness  to  the  years  that  had  passed. 
She  asked  me  about  Henri  VIII,  which  was  being 
given  for  the  second  time  at  Covent  Garden,  and 

264 


THEIR  MAJESTIES 

I  explained  to  her  that  in  my  desire  to  give  the 
piece  the  local  color  of  its  times  I  had  been  fer- 
reting about  in  the  royal  library  at  Buckingham 
Palace,  to  which  my  friend,  the  librarian,  had 
given  me  access.  And  I  also  told  how  I  had 
found  in  a  great  collection  of  manuscripts  of  the 
Sixteenth  Century  an  exquisitely  fine  theme  ar- 
ranged for  the  harpsichord,  which  served  as  the 
framework  for  the  opera — I  used  it  later  for  the 
march  I  wrote  for  the  coronation  of  King  Edward. 
The  Queen  was  much  interested  in  music  in  gen- 
eral and  she  appeared  to  be  especially  pleased  in 
this  discussion.  His  Highness  the  Duke  of  Con- 
naught  wrote  me  that  she  had  spoken  of  it  several 


o 

times. 


The  musical  library  at  Buckingham  Palace  is 
most  remarkable  and  it  is  a  pity  that  access  to  it  is 
not  easier.  Among  other  things,  there  are  the 
manuscripts  of  Handel's  oratorios,  written  for  the 
most  part  with  disconcerting  rapidity.  His  Mes- 
siah was  composed  in  fifteen  days!  The  rudi- 
mentary instrumentation  of  the  time  made  such 
speed  possible,  yet  who  is  there  to-day  who  could 
write  all  those  fugue  choruses  with  such  speed? 

265 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

The  fugue  manner,  which  seems  laborious  to  us, 
was  current  at  the  time  and  they  were  practised 
in  it.  The  library  also  contains  works  of  Han- 
del's contemporaries,  which  are  executed  with  the 
same  mastery.  We  cannot  say  whether  they 
were  written  with  the  same  rapidity  as  Handel's, 
but  it  is  easy  to  see  that  there  was  a  general  ability 
to  do  so,  just  as  now  it  is  a  matter  of  common  at- 
tainment to  produce  complicated  orchestral 
effects,  the  possibility  of  which  the  old  masters 
had  no  conception.  What  made  Handel  supe- 
rior to  his  rivals  was  the  romantic  and  pictur- 
esc[ue  side  of  his  works;  probably  also,  his  pro- 
digious and  unvarying  fertility. 

The  last  word  has  been  said  about  Queen  Vic- 
toria, yet  the  peculiar  charm  which  radiated  from 
her  personality  cannot  be  too  highly  praised. 
She  seemed  the  personification  of  England. 
When  she  passed  on,  it  seemed  as  though  a  great 
void  were  left.  All  King  Edward's  splendid 
qualities  were  necessary  to  take  her  place,  com- 
bined with  the  effect  of  the  world's  surprise  at 
discovering  a  great  king  where  they  had  expected 

266 


THEIR  MAJESTIES 

to  see  only  a  brilliant  prince  who  had  been  a  con- 
stant lover  of  pomp  and  pleasure. 

I  was  later  admitted  to  Buckingham  Palace  to 
play  with  Josef  Hollman,  the  violinist,  before 
Queen  Alexandra.  We  both  were  eager  for  this 
opportunity  which  we  were  told  was  impossible. 
The  Queen  was  very  busy,  and,  in  addition,  she 
was  in  mourning  for  the  successive  deaths  of  her 
father  and  mother,  the  King  and  Queen  of  Den- 
mark. Suddenly,  however,  we  learned  that  she 
would  receive  us.  She  was  pale  and  appeared 
to  be  feeble,  but  she  received  us  with  the  utmost 
cordiality.  She  spoke  to  me  about  her  mother, 
whom  I  had  seen  at  Copenhagen  with  her  sisters 
the  Empress  Dowager  of  Russia,  and  the  Princess 
of  Hanover  whom  politics  deprived  of  a  crown 
which  was  hers  by  right.  I  have  a  very  pleasant 
recollection  of  this  visit.  I  do  not  know  how  it 
happened  but  I  remained  speechless  at  this  lead 
from  the  Queen.  She  brought  the  subject  up  a 
second  time  and  my  timidity  still  prevented  my 
responding.  I  ought  to  have  had  many  things 
to  say  to  one  so  obviously  eager  to  listen.  This 

267 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

Queen  of  Denmark,  with  her  eighty  years,  was 
the  most  delightful  old  lady  imaginable.  Erect, 
slight,  alert  of  mind  and  unfaltering  of  speech, 
she  reminded  me  vividly  of  my  maternal  great- 
aunt,  that  extraordinary  woman,  who  gave  me  my 
first  notions  of  things  and  directed  my  hand  on 
the  keys  so  well. 

A  singer  whom  I  had  never  seen  or  heard  of, 
but  of  whom  I  had  heard  poor  reports,  had  writ- 
ten Queen  Louise  that  I  wanted  to  accompany  her 
to  court.  The  Queen  asked  me  if  I  knew  her  and 
if  what  she  had  written  was  true.  My  surprise 
was  so  great  that  I  could  not  repress  a  start,  which 
I  followed  by  an  exclamation  of  denial,  which  ap- 
peared to  amuse  her  greatly.  "I  did  not  doubt 
it,"  she  said,  "but  I'm  not  sorry  to  be  sure." 

Queen  Alexandra  was  accompanied  by  Lady 
Gray,  her  great  friend,  and  the  hereditary  prin- 
cess of  Greece.  After  M.  Hollman  and  I  had 
played  a  duet,  she  expressed  a  desire  to  hear  me 
play  alone.  As  I  attempted  to  lift  the  lid  of  the 
piano,  she  stepped  forward  to  help  me  raise  it  be- 
fore the  maids  of  honor  could  intervene.  After 
this  slight  concert  she  delivered  to  each  of  us,  in 

268 


THEIR  MAJESTIES 

her  own  name  and  in  that  of  the  absent  king,  a 
gold  medal  commemorative  of  artistic  merit,  and 
she  offered  us  a  cup  of  tea  which  she  poured  with 
her  royal  and  imperial  hands. 

Other  queens  have  also  received  me — Queen 
Christine  of  Spain  and  Queen  Amelie  of  Portu- 
gal. After  Queen  Christine  had  heard  me  play 
on  the  piano,  she  expressed  a  desire  to  hear  me 
play  the  organ,  and  they  chose  for  this  an  excel- 
lent instrument  made  by  Cavaille-Coll  in  a 
church  whose  name  I  have  forgotten.  The  day 
was  fixed  for  this  ceremony,  which  would  natur- 
ally have  been  of  a  private  character,  when  some 
great  ladies  lectured  the  indiscreet  queen  for  dar- 
ing to  resort  to  a  sacred  place  for  any  purpose 
besides  taking  part  in  divine  services.  The 
queen  was  displeased  by  this  remonstance  and 
she  responded  by  coming  to  the  church  not  only 
not  incognito,  but  in  great  state,  with  the  king 
(he  was  very  young) ,  the  ministers  and  the  court, 
while  horsemen  stationed  at  intervals  blew  their 
trumpets.  I  had  written  a  religious  march  es- 
pecially for  this  event,  and  the  Queen  kindly  ac- 
cepted its  dedication  to  her.  I  was  a  little  flus- 

269 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

tered  when  she  asked  me  to  play  the  too  familiar 
melody  from  Samson  et  Dalila  which  begins  Mon 
coeur  s'ouvre  a  ta  voix.  I  had  to  improvise  a 
transposition  suited  for  the  organ,  something  I 
had  never  dreamt  of  doing.  During  the  per- 
formance the  Queen  leaned  her  elbow  on  the  key- 
board of  the  organ,  her  chin  resting  on  one  hand 
and  her  eyes  upturned.  She  seemed  rapt  in  ex- 
stasy  which,  as  may  be  imagined,  was  not  pre- 
cisely displeasing  to  the  author. 

The  press  of  the  day  printed  delightful  arti- 
cles about  the  scene,  but  with  no  pretense  to  accu- 
racy. I  had  nothing  to  do  with  that  in  any  way. 

Her  Majesty  Queen  Amelie  of  Portugal  once 
honored  me  in  a  distinctive  manner.  She  re- 
ceived me  alone  without  any  of  her  ladies  of 
honor,  which  allowed  her  to  dispense  with  all  eti- 
quette and  to  have  me  sit  in  a  chair  near  her.  In 
this  intimate  way  she  entertained  me  for  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  asking  questions  on  all  sorts 
of  subjects.  I  had  the  chance  to  tell  her  how  the 
oriental  theme  of  the  ballet  in  Samson  had  been 
given  to  me  years  before  by  General  Yusuf,  and 
to  give  her  many  details  of  that  interesting  per- 

270 


THEIR  MAJESTIES 

sonage  of  whom  she  had  heard  her  uncles  speak. 

"I  am  going  to  leave  you,"  she  said  at  last, 
"but  not  because  I  want  to.  If  one  conscien- 
tiously practices  the  metier  of  being  a  queen,  one 
doesn't  always  find  it  amusing." 

What  would  that  unhappy  woman  have  said, 
could  she  have  foreseen  the  calamities  that  were 
to  befall  her ! 

In  Rome  I  had  the  honor  to  be  invited  to  a 
musicale  at  Queen  Margharita's.  The  great 
drawing-rooms  were  filled  with  great  ladies  laden 
down  with  family  jewels  of  fabulous  value.  All 
the  music  was  terribly  serious.  Now  this  kind  of 
music  does  not  make  for  personal  acquaintance, 
especially  as  all  these  great  people  were  victims 
of  a  boredom  they  did  their  best  to  conceal. 
Afterwards  the  two  queens  wanted  to  talk  to  me. 
Queen  Helene,  who  is  a  violinist,  told  me  that  her 
children  were  learning  the  violin  and  the  cello,  an 
arrangement  I  praised  highly,  for  the  exclusive 
devotion  to  the  piano  in  these  later  days  has  been 
the  death  of  chamber  music  and  almost  of  music 
itself. 

In  my  gallery  of  sovereigns  I  cannot  forget  the 
271 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

gracious  Queen  of  Belgium.  I  have  always  seen 
her,  however,  in  company  with  her  august  hus- 
band, and  this  story  would  become  interminable 
if  I  were  to  include  "Their  Majesties"  of  the 
sterner  sex — the  Emperor  of  Germany,  the  Kings 
of  Sweden,  Denmark,  Spain,  Portugal.  .  .  . 

As  I  have  had  more  to  do  with  princes  than 
with  sovereigns,  my  tongue  sometimes  slips  in 
talking  to  the  latter.  As  I  excused  myself  one 
day  for  addressing  the  Queen  of  Belgium  as 
"Highness,"  she  replied,  with  a  smile,  "Don't 
apologize;  that  recalls  good  times." 

She  told  me  of  the  time  when  she  and  the  king, 
then  only  heirs  apparent,  used  to  go  up  and  down 
the  Mediterranean  coast  in  a  little  two-seated 
car.  It  was  during  this  period  that  I  had  the 
honor  of  meeting  them  at  the  palace  of  his  Serene 
Highness  the  Prince  of  Monaco,  and  of  having 
charming  and  interesting  personal  conversation 
with  them,  for  the  king  is  a  savant  and  the  queen 
an  artist. 


272 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

MUSICAL   PAINTERS 

Ingres  was  famous  for  his  violin.  A  single 
wall  separated  the  apartment  where  I  lived  dur- 
ing my  childhood  and  youth  from  the  one  where 
the  painter  Granger,  one  of  Ingres's  pupils,  with 
his  wife  and  daughter,  lived.  Granger  painted 
the  Adoration  of  the  Wise  Men  in  the  church  of 
Notre  Dame  de  Lorette.  I  have  played  with  the 
gilt  paper  crown  which  his  model  wore  when  pos- 
ing as  one  of  the  three  kings.  My  mother  and 
Mile.  Granger  (who  later  became  Madame  Paul 
Meurice)  both  loved  painting  and  become  great 
friends.  They  copied  together  Paul  Delaroche's 
Enfants  d'Edouard  at  the  Louvre,  a  picture  which 
was  the  rage  at  that  time.  My  mother's  paint- 
ings, in  an  admirable  state  of  preservation,  may 
be  seen  at  the  museum  at  Dieppe. 

I  was  introduced  to  Ingres  when  I  was  five 
273 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

years  old  through  the  Granger  family.  The  dis- 
tance from  the  Rue  du  Jardinet,  where  we  lived, 
to  the  Quai  Voltaire  was  not  far,  and  we  often 
went  like  a  procession — the  Grangers,  my  great- 
aunt  Masson,  my  mother  and  I — to  call  upon  In- 
gres and  his  wife,  a  delightfully  simple  woman 
whom  everyone  loved. 

Ingres  often  talked  to  me  ahout  Mozart,  Gluck, 
and  all  the  other  great  masters  of  music.  When 
I  was  six  years  old,  I  composed  an  Adagio  which  I 
dedicated  to  him  in  all  seriousness.  Fortunately 
this  masterpiece  has  been  lost.  As  I  already 
played,  and  rather  nicely  for  my  years,  some  of 
Mozart's  sonatas,  Ingres,  in  return  for  my  dedi- 
cation, presented  me  with  a  small  medallion  with 
the  portrait  of  the  author  of  Don  Juan  on  one 
side,  and  this  inscription  on  the  other:  "To  M. 
Saint-Saens,  the  charming  interpreter  of  the  di- 
vine artist." 

He  carelessly  omitted  to  add  the  date  of  this 
dedication,  which  would  have  increased  its  inter- 
est, for  the  idea  of  calling  a  knee-high  youngster 
of  six  "M.  Saint-Saens"  was  certainly  unusual. 

In  addition  to  the  calls  I  paid  him,  when  I  was 
274 


Ingres,  the  painter  famous  for  his  violin 


MUSICAL  PAINTERS 

older  I  often  met  the  great  painter  at  the  house 
of  Frederic  Reiset,  one  of  his  most  ardent  admir- 
ers. They  made  much  of  music  in  that  house- 
hold and  we  often  heard  there  Delsarte,  the  singer 
without  a  voice,  whom  Ingres  admired  very  much. 
Delsarte  and  Henri  Reber  were,  in  fact,  his  musi- 
cal mentors,  and,  in  spite  of  his  pretence  of  being 
a  great  connoisseur,  he  was  in  reality  their  echo. 
He  affected,  for  example,  the  most  profound  con- 
tempt for  all  modern  music,  and  would  not  even 
listen  to  it.  In  this  respect  he  reflected  Reber. 
Reber  used  to  say  quietly  in  his  far-away  nasal 
voice,  "You've  got  to  imitate  somebody,  so  the 
best  thing  to  do  is  to  imitate  the  ancients,  for  they 
are  the  best."  However,  he  undertook  to  prove 
the  contrary  by  writing  some  particularly  individ- 
ual music,  when  he  thought  he  was  imitating 
Haydn  and  Mozart.  Some  of  his  works,  in  their 
perfection  of  line,  their  regard  for  details,  their 
purity  and  their  moderation  remind  one  of  In- 
gres's  drawings  which  express  so  much  in  such  a 
simple  way.  And  Ingres,  as  well,  although  he 
tried  to  imitate  Raphael,  could  only  be  himself. 
Reber  would  have  been  worthy  of  comparison 

275 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

with  the  painter,  if  he  had  had  the  power  and 
productiveness  which  distinguish  genius. 

What  about  Ingres's  violin?  Well,  I  saw  this 
famous  violin  for  the  first  time  in  the  Montaubon 
Museum.  Ingres  never  even  spoke  to  me  about 
it.  He  is  said  to  have  played  it  in  his  youth,  but 
I  could  never  persuade  him  to  play  even  the 
slightest  sonata  with  me.  "I  used  to  play,"  he 
replied  to  my  entreaties,  "the  second  violin  in  a 
quartet,  but  that  is  all." 

So  I  think  I  must  be  dreaming  when  I  read, 
from  time  to  time,  that  Ingres  was  more  apprecia- 
tive of  compliments  about  his  violin-playing  than 
those  about  his  painting.  That  is  merely  a  leg- 
end, but  it  is  impossible  to  destroy  a  legend.  As 
the  good  La  Fontaine  said: 

"Man  is  like  ice  toward  truth; 
He  is  like  fire  to  untruth." 

I  do  not  know  whether  Ingres  showed  talent 
for  the  violin  in  his  youth  or  not.  But  I  can  state 
positively  that  in  his  maturity  he  showed  none. 

Gustave  Dore  was  also  said  to  be  famous  on 
the  violin,  and  his  claims  to  consideration  were 

276 


MUSICAL  PAINTERS 

far  from  inconsiderable.  He  had  acquired  a  val- 
uable instrument,  on  which  he  used  to  play  Ber- 
lioz's Concertos  with  a  really  extraordinary  facil- 
ity and  spirit.  These  superficial  works  were 
enough  for  his  musical  powers.  The  surprising 
things  about  his  execution  was  that  he  never 
worked  at  it.  If  he  could  not  get  a  thing  at  once, 
he  gave  it  up  for  good  and  all. 

He  was  a  frequent  attendant  at  Rossini's  salon, 
and  he  belonged  to  the  faction  which  supported 
melody  and  opposed  "learned  scientific  music." 
His  temperament  and  mine  hardly  seem  compat- 
ible, but  friendship,  like  love,  has  its  inexplicable 
mysteries,  and  gradually  we  became  the  best  of 
friends.  We  lived  in  the  same  quarter  and  we 
visited  each  other  frequently.  As  we  almost 
never  were  of  the  same  opinion  about  anything, 
we  had  interminable  arguments,  entirely  free 
from  rancor,  which  we  thoroughly  enjoyed. 

I  finally  became  the  confidant  of  his  secret  sor- 
rows, and  his  innermost  griefs.  He  was  en- 
dowed with  a  wonderful  visual  memory,  but  he 
made  the  mistake  of  never  using  models,  for  in 
his  opinion  they  were  useless  for  an  artist  who 

277 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

knew  his  metier.  So  he  condemned  himself  to  a 
perpetual  approximation,  which  was  enough  for 
illustrations  demanding  only  life  and  character, 
but  fatal  for  large  canvasses,  with  half  or  full 
sized  figures.  This  was  the  cause  of  his  disap- 
pointments and  failures  which  he  attributed  to 
malevolence  and  a  hostility,  which  really  did  ex- 
ist, but  which  took  advantage  of  this  opportunity 
to  make  the  painter  pay  for  the  exaggerated  suc- 
cess of  the  designer  that  had  been  extravagantly 
praised  by  the  press  from  the  beginning.  He 
laid  himself  open  to  criticism  through  his  abuse 
of  his  own  facility.  I  have  seen  him  painting 
away  on  thirty  canvasses  at  the  same  time  in  his 
immense  studio.  Three  seriously  studied  pic- 
tures would  have  been  worth  more. 

At  heart  this  great  overgrown  jovial  boy  was 
melancholy  and  sensitive.  He  died  young  from 
heart  disease,  which  was  aggravated  by  grief  over 
the  death  of  his  mother  from  whom  he  had  never 
been  separated. 

I  dedicated  a  slight  piece  written  for  the  violin 
to  Dore.  This  was  not  lost  as  the  one  to  Ingres 
was,  but  it  would  be  entirely  unknown  had  not 

278 


MUSICAL  PAINTERS 

Johannes  Wolf,  the  violinist  of  queens  and  em- 
presses, done  me  the  favor  of  placing  it  in  his 
repertoire  and  bringing  his  fine  talent  to  its  aid. 

Hebert  was  the  most  serious  of  the  painter-vio- 
linists. Down  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  delighted 
in  playing  the  sonatas  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven, 
and,  from  all  accounts,  he  played  them  remark- 
ably. I  can  say  this  only  from  hearsay,  for  I 
never  heard  him.  The  few  times  that  I  ever  saw 
him  at  home  in  my  youth,  I  found  him  with  his 
brush  in  hand.  I  saw  him  after  that  only  at  the 
Academic,  where  we  sat  near  each  other,  and  he 
always  greeted  me  cordially.  We  talked  music 
from  time  to  time,  and  he  conversed  like  a  con- 
noisseur. 

Henri  Regnault  was  the  most  musical  of  all 
the  painters  whom  I  have  known.  He  did  not 
need  a  violin — he  was  his  own.  Nature  had  en- 
dowed him  with  an  exquisite  tenor  voice.  It  was 
alluring  in  its  timbre  and  irresistible  in  its  attrac- 
tiveness, just  as  he  was  himself.  He  was  no 
"near  musician."  He  loved  music  passionately, 
and  he  was  unwilling  to  sing  as  an  amateur.  He 
took  lessons  from  Romain  Bussine  at  the  Con- 

279 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

servatoire.  He  sang  to  perfection  the  difficult 
arias  of  Mozart's  Don  Juan.  He  also  liked  to 
declaim  the  magnificent  recitative  of  Pilgrimage 
in  the  third  act  of  Tannhauser. 

As  we  were  friendly  and  liked  the  same  things, 
the  sympathy  which  brought  us  together  was 
quite  natural.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  in 
1870  I  wrote  Les  Melodies  Persanes  and  Reg- 
nault  was  their  first  interpreter.  Sabre  en  main 
is  dedicated  to  him.  But  his  great  success  was 
Le  Cimitiere.  Who  would  have  thought  as  he 
sang: 

"To-day  the  roses, 
To-morrow  the  cypress!" 

that  the  prophecy  would  be  realized  so  soon? 

Some  imbeciles  have  written  that  the  loss  of 
Regnault  was  not  to  be  regretted;  that  he  had 
said  all  he  had  to  say.  In  reality  he  had  given 
only  the  prologue  of  the  great  poem  which  he 
was  working  out  in  his  brain.  He  had  already 
ordered  canvasses  for  great  compositions  which, 
without  a  doubt,  would  have  been  among  the 
glories  of  French  art. 

280 


MUSICAL  PAINTERS 

I  saw  him  for  the  last  time  during  the  siege. 
He  was  just  starting  for  drill  with  his  rifle  in  his 
hand.  One  of  the  four  watercolors  which  were 
his  last  work,  stood  uncompleted  on  his  easel. 
There  was  a  shapeless  spot  at  the  bottom.  He 
held  a  handkerchief  in  his  free  hand.  He  mois- 
tened this  from  time  to  time  with  saliva  and  kept 
tapping  away  on  the  spot  on  the  picture.  To  my 
great  astonishment,  almost  to  my  fright,  I  saw 
roughed  out  and  finished  the  head  of  a  lion. 

A  few  days  afterwards  came  Buzenval! 

When  the  question  of  publishing  Henri  Reg- 
nault's  letters  came  up,  some  phrases  referring  to 
me  and  ranking  me  above  my  rivals  were  found 
in  them.  The  editor  of  the  letter  got  into  com- 
munication with  me,  read  me  the  phrases,  and  an- 
nounced that  they  were  to  be  suppressed,  because 
they  might  displease  the  other  musicians. 

I  knew  who  the  other  musicians  were,  and 
whose  puppet  the  editor  was.  It  would  have 
been  possible,  it  seems  to  me,  without  hurting 
anyone,  to  include  the  exaggerated  praise,  which, 
coming  from  a  painter,  had  no  weight,  and  which 
would  have  proved  nothing  except  the  great 

281 


MUSICAL  MEMORIES 

friendship  which  inspired  it.  I  have  always  re- 
gretted that  the  public  did  not  learn  of  the  senti- 
ments with  which  the  great  artist,  whom  I  loved 
so  much,  honored  me. 


THE    END 


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